Omni Network closes $600M deal with Ether.Fi
Omni Network has secured a $600 million deal in Ether (ETH) to reinvent Ether.Fi, a protocol used to improve the security of the Omni Network and EigenLayer.
According to a March 4 X post by Omni Networks, $600 million will help secure both Omni's testnet and mainnet.
“Omni is proud to announce a $600M stake in ETH from @ether_fi to secure the Omni network. This first-of-its-kind deal puts us at the forefront of the growing renewables ecosystem.”
The Omni Network is a layer-1 interoperable blockchain that securely connects Ethereum coils by reprocessing, aiming to provide low latency and improve ecosystem scalability.
The $600 million valuation represents approximately 33% of Ether's total value locked (TVL) of $1.88 billion. Ether.Fi is currently the world's largest liquidity rebalancing protocol, after its TVL grew by more than 163% last month, according to Defillama data.
The $600 million worth of Ether will be restocked on EigenLayer, the largest Ethereum recovery protocol currently worth more than $10.3 billion in TVL.
The new strategic partnership comes two weeks after venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz ( a16z ) announced a $100 million funding round for EigenLayer. The protocol completed a $50 million round of funding led by Blockchain Capital in March.
Related: EigenLayer partners with Ritual to build AI-enabled DApps.
Founded in 2021, EigenLayer enables other networks to re-hold liquidity-saving native tokens, such as Lido's Staked Ether and RocketPool's RETH, to secure and validate them. These assets can be deployed in other decentralized financial protocols for additional yield.
Liquidity reserves are currently the largest protocol category on DEFLAMA, with a combined TVL of $54.7 billion, while rebalancing protocols are in sixth place with a value of $10.305 billion. EigenLayer's TVL alone accounts for 99.96% of the $10.305 billion in recovery protocols.
Investor interest began to pick up on February 5 after the protocol temporarily removed its stock holding in an effort to encourage organic growth. During this restocking window, EigenLayer's TVL jumped over 181% to $6.05 billion from just $2.15 billion on February 10.
Related: Crypto's Next Leap: Ether ETFs Through Keyrock's Kaleidoscope
