No.292
Renzo REZ
the relay runner who never drops the baton
🎭 a marathoner with two jobs at once: carry your ETH and keep it earning, even while sprinting
💬 “Hand me your ETH and I'll make it run two races at once. You get back a baton called ezETH that keeps glowing with rewards, and you can pass it on anytime. I tripped badly once, in April 2024, but I got up and kept running.”
- What it is: a liquid restaking protocol on Ethereum, built on top of EigenLayer.
- What you get: stake ETH, receive ezETH, a token that keeps earning yet stays tradable.
- The scar: in April 2024 ezETH fell about 79% in under an hour and triggered tens of millions in liquidations, then recovered.
- The token: REZ is the governance coin, launched April 30, 2024, capped at 10 billion.
📖 The Story
Late October 2023. Renzo's mainnet went live and started taking ETH deposits. The pitch was simple to say and hard to build: people wanted the extra rewards of EigenLayer restaking, but restaking meant locking ETH away and choosing which services to back, fiddly work most folks never wanted to do. Founders Lucas Kozinski, James Poole, and Kratik Lodha built a runner to carry that load for you.
Here is the trick. You hand Renzo your ETH. It stakes that ETH, then restakes it through EigenLayer so the same coins do a second job. In return you get ezETH, a liquid token that keeps earning rewards while staying free to trade or lend. Your money runs two races and you still hold a baton you can pass along. Renzo quietly picks which services to back so you don't have to.
April 24, 2024. The fall. Renzo revealed the details of its coming REZ token, and a lot of holders were let down by the numbers. Worse, withdrawals weren't switched on yet, so anyone who wanted out had only one door: sell ezETH on the open market. Everyone reached for that door at once. ezETH dropped roughly 79% in under an hour, as low as about $700, and because many traders had borrowed against it, the slide set off more than $56 million in cascading liquidations across DeFi lenders like Gearbox and Morpho. The peg later came back, but the bruise stayed.
April 30, 2024. Days later the REZ token launched anyway, with a 700 million airdrop to early point-holders and a debut market value around $289 million. The runner got back on his feet. By June 2026 REZ trades far below that debut, a reminder that getting up is not the same as winning the race.
📊 Stats
These are altrookie editorial ratings, not market data.
🧩 How it works
Renzo is not its own blockchain. It's a set of smart contracts living on Ethereum, so it borrows Ethereum's security instead of running a network of its own. The whole thing is a loop: your ETH goes in, does a second job, and comes back as a token you can put to work again.
That ezETH is the baton. Because you can still trade or lend it, your ETH isn't frozen while it works. REZ is a separate thing: it's the governance token, used to vote on how the protocol is run, not the receipt for your deposit. (Renzo also lets holders earn protocol revenue by staking REZ itself.)
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Makes a genuinely fiddly job easy: one deposit and Renzo handles the restaking and service-picking for you
- Your ETH keeps earning without being locked, because ezETH stays tradable and usable across DeFi
- Security leans on Ethereum itself, so Renzo doesn't have to defend a brand-new network of its own
- The April 2024 depeg was real and painful: ezETH fell about 79% in an hour and helped trigger over $56 million in liquidations
- It's a tower built on towers. Renzo depends on EigenLayer, which depends on Ethereum, so trouble at any layer flows downhill
- ezETH is only worth its peg if you can actually redeem it. When withdrawals are closed, the price floats on market mood, as 2024 showed
🧬 Evolution lineage
Renzo isn't a fork of any coin. It grew out of staking: first plain liquid staking (Lido's stETH), then EigenLayer added restaking, and Renzo is one of the runners built on that restaking layer.
Its siblings are the other liquid restaking protocols racing the same track: ether.fi (eETH), Puffer (pufETH), Kelp DAO (rsETH), and Swell (rswETH).
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Renzo?
- A liquid restaking protocol on Ethereum. You stake ETH through it and get back ezETH, a token that keeps earning restaking rewards while staying tradable and usable in DeFi. It runs on top of EigenLayer and is a set of smart contracts, not its own blockchain.
- What is ezETH?
- ezETH is the receipt Renzo hands you when you stake. It represents your staked-and-restaked ETH, grows in value as rewards add up, and can be traded or used elsewhere while it earns. The catch: its price is supposed to track ETH, and in April 2024 that link broke for a while.
- What happened in the April 2024 depeg?
- On April 24, 2024, ezETH dropped about 79% in under an hour, as low as roughly $700. Users were unhappy with the REZ token reveal and withdrawals weren't open yet, so the only exit was selling ezETH. The rush set off more than $56 million in cascading DeFi liquidations before the peg recovered.
- What is the REZ token for?
- REZ is Renzo's governance and utility token, used to vote on protocol decisions. It launched on April 30, 2024 with a 700 million airdrop and a hard cap of 10 billion coins. It is separate from ezETH: ezETH is your staking receipt, REZ is the voting token. (Information only, not investment advice.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only