Key Takeaways:
Ether.fi launched its Summer release on Thursday, adding tokenized stocks, metals and Aave-powered portfolio loans at roughly 4 percent to its self-custodial neobank app.
"With ether.fi, we're bridging the gap between decentralized finance and everyday financial needs," Mike Silagadze, chief executive officer at Ether.fi, said. "Our goal is to replace the traditional bank for most users and give them tools and benefits that were previously available only to institutions and high-net-worth individuals."
The update lets users buy tokenized equities and commodities through xStocks alongside crypto assets, hold them in self-custodial vaults with social recovery, and borrow against their full portfolio at DeFi rates currently near 4 percent to fund spending on the ether.fi Cash card. The protocol has about 500,000 members and roughly 150,000 cards issued, with a $2 billion annual transaction run rate, Silagadze told The Block. Ether.fi carries $3.5 billion in total value locked, per DefiLlama, generating more than $219 million in annualized fees and over $50 million in revenue.
The expansion lands as major exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and OKX add tokenized stocks and banking-like features in a bid to become financial superapps. Ether.fi will run programmatic buybacks of its ETHFI token funded by product revenue; ETHFI traded near $0.38 as of Aug. 13. Some features, including tokenized stock trading, remain unavailable in the U.S. and certain other markets.
Aave market and card rails
The new Optimism-based Aave market lets users lend assets and borrow against their portfolio at standard DeFi rates, with proceeds spendable via the ether.fi Cash card. The card, which moved to Optimism from the Scroll Ethereum layer 2 earlier this year, offers 3 percent cash back on purchases, zero top-up fees and zero foreign-exchange fees at higher membership tiers. New on- and off-ramps support more than 30 currencies and methods, including Apple Pay and Cash App.
Ether.fi, once focused entirely on restaking, has shifted toward consumer finance. It exited its weETH restaking exposure on EigenLayer in favor of Symbiotic rails and allocated $100 million to a Plume real-world-asset vault. In April, it committed $3 billion in ETH as validator liquidity to ETHGas, an Ethereum blockspace futures platform, in a three-year deal.
For users in countries where cards cannot be issued, the app still offers staking and fiat on- and off-ramp rails, Silagadze said. The broader RWA tokenization push could draw non-crypto-native users to DeFi, though tokenized stock trading remains restricted in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
