ether.fi is adding tokenized stock trading, portfolio-wide borrowing and global fiat transfers to its app, moving the liquid staking protocol further into retail banking products. The company announced the changes Thursday as part of what it calls its Summer release.
The launch continues a shift ether.fi has been making all year. The protocol removed restaking from weETH last week, leaving less than 1% of its assets restaked with EigenLayer, and has spent 2026 building the card, credit and payments stack it first described as a "defibank" in April 2025.
Staking is still almost all of the balance sheet. ether.fi's staking arm holds $3.34 billion, DefiLlama data shows. Its Optimism borrowing market holds $160.2 million against $23.3 million of active loans, up 11.8% over 30 days, and the vault backing the Cash card holds $124.5 million.
"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," ether.fi CEO Mike Silagadze said in a statement.
The release says an integrated Aave market on Optimism lets users borrow against their entire portfolio at rates "currently around 4%" to spend on the Cash card or buy other assets. USDC on Aave v3 Optimism carries a borrow rate of 3.82%, Aavescan data shows.
