ether.fi

ether.fi started as an Ethereum liquid staking and restaking protocol (weETH/eBTC) and has evolved into a non-custodial crypto neobank. Users can stake to earn yield, trade tokenized stocks and precious metals, borrow against their entire portfolio via an Aave market on Optimism at around 4% interest, spend with the Cash card (3% cashback), and use fiat on/off ramps supporting 30+ currencies and payment methods such as Apple Pay and Cash App.

Its core narrative is replacing traditional banking with self-custody and DeFi interest rates, bringing institutional-grade tools like portfolio-level borrowing and real-world assets to everyday users. The ETHFI token also has a programmatic buyback funded by protocol revenue.

The pain points it addresses include high barriers and opacity in traditional banking, the complexity of DeFi, and the friction of selling crypto to spend or moving between fragmented chains and fiat rails.

In the past six months, the major development was the "Summer" upgrade on August 13, 2026, which integrated the above services into one app. The Cash card migrated from Scroll to Optimism to be on the same chain as the Aave market, and weETH restaking positions were largely moved from EigenLayer to Symbiotic. As of the upgrade, ether.fi reported over 500,000 members, about 150,000 cards issued, ~$2 billion in annualized transaction volume, and $3.34 billion in staked assets. However, the Optimism lending market remained small ($160 million deposits and $23.3 million active borrows), showing the transformation is still early. Notably, tokenized stock trading is not available in the US and some other jurisdictions.