December inflows into Swell’s liquid-staking protocol exceed $125 million

In December, the total value of funds (TVL), locked in the DeFi protocol liquid staking Swell, doubled. The metric surpassed 105,000 ETH (~$250 million), according to data from the Dune dashboard by Hildobby, an analyst at Dragonfly.

Since the start of the month, about $125 million worth of ETH has flowed into the platform. As a result, Swell became one of the largest TVL protocols in its segment, where the leaders are:

• Lido — more than 9 million ETH ($21.97 billion);
• Rocket Pool — 822,500 ETH ($2.91 billion);
• Frax — 236,000 ETH ($1.39 billion).

The inflow accelerated in mid-December after the Pearl rewards program was announced in the form of points for users who mint the native swETH token and deploy it on the restaking platform EigenLayer.

The protocol enables restaking of assets it has received in exchange for ETH locked on other platforms. The coins can be used to validate and defend external networks, such as sidechains or blockchains not based on the EVM.

EigenLayer aims to become a decentralised marketplace for Ethereum node operators and validators who will earn revenue for additional services. 

In the second half of December, restaking platform developers expanded the list of supported assets, adding swETH from Swell, sETH from Stakewise, xETH from Stader, oETH from Origin, ankrETH from Ankr and Wrapped Beacon Ether (wBETH).

As of writing, EigenLayer’s TVL stands at $1.07 billion.

As with other similar protocols, Swell users receive swETH for their staked ETH. The latter can be used on other DeFi ecosystem platforms to earn additional yield.

Earlier, Glassnode analysts concluded that LSD protocols significantly influence the structure of supply and Ethereum issuance dynamics.