Wormhole, EigenLayer and NEAR-focused Nuffle Labs partner to bring restaking beyond Ethereum

Wormhole is working with restaking protocol developers Nuffle Labs on a solution to expand EigenLayer’s restaking functionality beyond the Ethereum ecosystem, according to an announcement on Tuesday. The move represents a serious development for one of the buzziest areas of crypto R&D: sharing the security generated by staking to secure multiple protocols and applications simultaneously.   

The solution, which leverages Wormhole’s message-passing architecture and Nuffle’s NUFF protocol, will enable restaking assets directly from any Layer 1 or Layer 2 blockchain without the need for asset bridging, the teams wrote in a statement. 

Restaking has become an area of intense focus and interest for many crypto-industry participants. In short, protocols like EigenLayer enable apps to pool the security of already staked assets and avoid establishing their own separate security infrastructure. The sector improves the efficiency of proof-of-stake platforms while also possibly enabling new forms of blockchain use cases. 

Applications and protocols that share restaked assets are known as “actively validated services,” or AVSs, which can set up bespoke validation tasks or rules. Some experts think restaking will play an essential role in oracles providing off-chain data to onchain smart contracts, in Layer 2 rollups tapping in for additional security and ensuring data availability. 

Nuffle Labs, a spin-off venture from the NEAR Foundation, is developing modular blockchain technology to scale the ecosystem, including the NEAR Data Availability Layer and NEAR Fast Finality Layer. 

The partnership with Wormhole will make all the tokens provided through Nuffle’s infrastructure available to AVSs built on EigenLayer’s shared security framework.

"Over time, as every asset gets restaked and the industry becomes more interconnected, our vision is to create an ecosystem where you can do anything from anywhere,” Nuffle CEO Altan Tutar said in a statement. “Whether it be lending, borrowing or restaking, we aim to create a global marketplace for all."