Renzo Finance

Renzo Protocol completed the first EigenLayer restaking reward distribution, marking the protocol's entry into the revenue realization phase.

Its governance token REZ expanded to the Solana ecosystem via Wormhole, enhancing cross-chain interoperability.

The protocol adopted an Ethereum reserve strategy, holding approximately 1050 ETH, and opened the third season airdrop claim, distributing 4% of REZ to over 80,000 addresses.

On September 9, 2026, Renzo rebranded to Renzo Finance and launched its first structured yield product, Renzo Basis, on Hyperliquid (delta-neutral basis trades on BTC and HYPE); the next day it listed on Korea's Upbit exchange, with REZ up about 33% in a day.

Tokenomics shifted to scarcity: on September 26, the team announced that over 95% of the 10 billion REZ supply is now circulating, major investor unlocks are complete, and incentive emissions have stopped — an "era of REZ scarcity"; the Foundation has been buying back REZ with protocol revenue since May 1.

Elsewhere: REZ perpetuals listed on Aster DEX on July 29; in October, Renzo integrated with Lighter to offer tokenized-stock basis yield for Robinhood users and plans to migrate protocol-owned liquidity to Aero. On the risk side, TVL has fallen over 90% in a year, and REZ is down about 98% from its $0.278 all-time high.

On September 9, 2026, Renzo Protocol rebranded as Renzo Finance and launched Renzo Basis on Hyperliquid, initially supporting BTC and HYPE. The product opens spot longs and perpetual shorts through agent wallets to earn funding rates, keeps assets in the user's self-custody wallet, and applies hedge, yield and safety-buffer guards.

Upbit listed REZ/USDT on September 10 and the token rose about 33% that day; on September 26 the team said more than 95% of the 10 billion supply is now circulating, ending major investor unlocks and incentive emissions. On Solana, ezSOL runs on Jito vaults with over $36 million restaked and about 7.2% APY.

Renzo Finance's Future strategy and roadmap: Add ZEC and ETH to the Renzo Basis automated basis-trading product in the fourth quarter, offering self-custody proxy-wallet users delta-neutral spot-long plus perp-short strategies beyond the current BTC and HYPE. In 2027 expand to Robinhood's Lighter chain and pilot structured yield notes such as autocallables and growth notes, while growing Solana ezSOL restaking on the Jito vault and maintaining an APY around 7 percent. It also reuses the Renzo Basis self-custody proxy-wallet architecture for more delta-neutral strategies, lowering user switching cost across basis, funding-rate and options hedging, and aims to expand hedgeable asset scale into new on-chain yield tracks in 2027.

Lucas Kozinski is a founding contributor and leads the project. Born in Poland and moved to New York at five, he earned an MBA from the University of Maryland Smith business school, worked in operations at Lockheed Martin and CACI, later in strategy consulting at Point B. He joined the Tezos Foundation as project lead in early 2018, became chief operating officer at Tokensoft in early 2020, left in late 2021 to found Moonwell, and started this project in summer 2023.

James Poole is co-founder and engineering lead. He graduated in software engineering from Embry-Riddle University and took an MBA at the UCF business school, was chief software engineer at Symantec and RSA and chief technology officer at Tokensoft. He has worked in engineering leadership since 2016, joining as third founding member in August 2023.

Kratik Lodha leads research and strategy. He holds a master's in economics from BITS Pilani and did research at Woodstock Fund before joining in 2023.

All three have six to seven years of full-time Web3 experience, split across operations, engineering and research.