Exclusive Interview with the Founder of Renzo: We Believe Everything Will Return to Ethereum
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Exclusive Interview with the Founder of Renzo: We Believe Everything Will Return to Ethereum
How did Renzo, which hasn't paid salaries for months, manage to secure investment from Binance Labs?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsInterview: Peng SUN, Kean, Foresight News
"The next cycle will still be Ethereum," Lucas Kozinski, founder of Renzo, firmly stated in an interview with Foresight News. Although Web3 applications have not yet experienced explosive growth, Lucas believes that decreasing Rollup costs and the upcoming launch of AVS services on EigenLayer open possibilities for an application-layer breakout.
The Renzo team is different from what you might imagine. Perhaps you’ve seen its $3 billion TVL, or noticed funding from Binance Labs, Maven11, OKX Ventures, IOSG, and other VCs—but these are just the shiny surfaces.
The restaking narrative gained momentum in January 2024, but Renzo, as the first live LRT protocol, launched as early as December last year. Despite all three founders being seasoned crypto veterans, Renzo was truly built from scratch. Starting their entrepreneurial journey last summer, they bootstrapped entirely on personal funds until meeting Maven11 in Turkey in November—none had taken a salary. This is the second LRT project I’ve heard of this year that went months without paying salaries, yet both secured investment from Binance Labs this year.
Survivorship bias in the crypto industry is always significant, but Renzo’s success was no accident. Open the Renzo website, and you’ll find integrations with numerous DeFi protocols and Layer2 networks. These reflect Renzo’s three-phase strategy focused on liquidity, efficiency, and risk management. "We’ll start on the Ethereum mainnet, expand to L2s, then integrate into decentralized exchanges and even CEXs—users will eventually be able to buy and hold ezETH directly on Coinbase, OKX, or Binance," Lucas said. "ezETH will be everywhere." That’s his vision for Renzo.
Modularity presents challenges for Ethereum, but in Lucas’s view, it’s a positive-sum game, not zero-sum. As AVSs on EigenLayer go live, lowering development costs for builders while allowing them to share Ethereum’s economic security, "everything will come back to Ethereum."
I. A Veteran Crypto Entrepreneur's Journey
Foresight News: Thank you for joining us. Please introduce yourself, your team, and your background in the crypto industry.
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo has three founders: myself, James Poole, and Kratik Lodha. All of us have 6 to 7 years of full-time experience in Web3. James has been a full-time engineering lead since 2016, I joined Web3 full-time in 2017, and Kratik Lodha, our research and product lead, entered the space in 2018.
I was born in Poland and moved with my family to New York when I was five. I first traded crypto in 2014 but lost money due to the Mt. Gox incident. At the end of 2016, I re-entered the space and rode the bull market from 2016 to 2017. In early 2018, I joined the Tezos Foundation as a project manager, then moved to Tokensoft in early 2020 as Head of Business Strategy and COO.
At the end of 2021, I left Tokensoft to found Moonwell—a lending protocol launched on Moonbeam and Polkadot’s Kusama network. It remains the largest DeFi protocol on Polkadot and one of the biggest mining protocols on Base.
Kratik previously worked at Woodstock Fund, which invested in Moonwell, and that’s how we met. In May last year, Kratik left Woodstock, and I left Moonwell around the same time. From there until July, we discussed launching a project on EigenLayer. In August, James joined as the third co-founder, and so we began building Renzo last summer.
Foresight News: It’s great to see your progress. Why did you choose the restaking sector? What motivated you to create Renzo? What kind of project do you hope it becomes?
Lucas Kozinski: I’m excited about developing on EigenLayer because it’s the first time I’ve seen an open market emerge in Web3. The importance of an open market lies in enabling open innovation and competition.
Historically, when new ecosystems launch, foundations typically do two things: select projects they want to position well within the ecosystem and grant them liquidity rewards. This structure creates problems—mainly stifling innovation, where only top-tier projects can capture liquidity and funding. With EigenLayer’s open market, we move beyond foundations simply subsidizing DeFi protocols with liquidity incentives. Instead, innovation is rewarded: whoever captures market share first, secures the most efficient liquidity distribution channels, and operates efficiently will ultimately win.
Additionally, wherever complexity and fragmentation exist, there’s opportunity to create value for users. When you consider EigenLayer’s relationships with all AVSs and operators, it becomes clear a whole new ecosystem and tech stack is emerging. By solving these issues and improving user efficiency, we have vast opportunities to deliver real value.
Foresight News: How is the Renzo team structured? Where are members located, and how do you collaborate?
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo now has 15 members—we’ve grown very quickly. Since December, our team has tripled in size. Most Renzo members are people we’ve known and worked with for years. This is crucial because our team is self-organizing. Unlike other projects where decisions flow top-down from a CEO or leader, Renzo is unique—it’s a decentralized collective. We have OGs from 2016–2017 who are highly professional and execution-driven. Having a single CEO managing daily operations would create bottlenecks and hinder rapid growth.
Currently, Renzo has three departments: Engineering (10 full-time engineers), Product & Research (2 people), and BD, Marketing & Operations (3 people). From day one, we established a foundation, and most members are paid directly through it—they’re foundation members.
Our team is globally distributed: 4 in India, 1 each in Hong Kong, Australia, and Budapest, plus several in the U.S.—a fully decentralized setup. Every Monday morning, we hold a sync meeting to align goals and discuss challenges. For the rest of the week, the team self-organizes across time zones. Each member starts their day by posting tasks and issues on Slack, and ends it with a brief summary—so everyone knows they’re wrapping up.
Foresight News: What has been your biggest challenge during Renzo’s startup journey?
Lucas Kozinski: The hardest moment was right at the beginning—when we were building, almost no one understood what Renzo was. People thought the market wasn’t big enough or saw little value. For a long time, we struggled—no investors, no community, no product. But that adversity became Renzo’s strength and the reason for our success.
Due to last year’s pressure, we faced financial difficulties. It wasn’t until November, when we met Maven11 in Turkey, that things started turning. Renzo’s culture is humble—we bootstrap rigorously, ensuring every dollar is used wisely. We went months without salaries, working voluntarily and essentially funding Renzo ourselves to bring it to market.
It’s hard to convey how difficult that was—starting from nothing, securing funding, and achieving what we have today. But we learned how to operate under pressure, developed strong survival instincts, and honed our execution ability and strategic agility. We launched our product on December 18th and reached over $2 billion TVL in just 13 weeks—becoming the fastest-growing liquid restaking protocol and a leading EigenLayer project.
II. Renzo’s Three-Step Strategy: Liquidity, Efficiency, and Risk Management
Foresight News: Could you introduce Renzo’s current products and business progress?
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo’s plan has three phases: Phase One focuses on boosting and distributing liquidity, Phase Two on efficiency, and Phase Three on portfolio construction and risk management—spanning roughly one to one-and-a-half years.
Right now, we’re in Phase One—TVL and DeFi integration. In just 13 weeks, Renzo integrated with over 50 DeFi protocols and launched native restaking on five Layer2s: BNB Chain, Mode, Linea, and Blast—with three more coming soon. Historically, projects that dominate liquidity distribution do so through aggressive integration and allocation, earning user trust. Without superior products or higher yields, competitors struggle to enter. High yields mean high barriers for others to capture market share. Second, we know liquidity is king. The protocol with the deepest liquidity and widest integrations achieves broadest adoption. Renzo enforces strict standards—we’re the only LRT protocol capable of providing Chainlink price feeds. While the market closely watches TVL as a leading indicator, we treat liquidity depth and DeFi integration as the true measures of leadership.
Phase Two is efficiency. EigenLayer runs on Ethereum mainnet—every transaction incurs gas fees, cutting into yields and reducing staker returns. That’s what we call inefficiency. Next month, as AVSs launch on EigenLayer, we’ll deploy an efficient solution to return AVS-generated rewards directly to stakers. Traditional LST protocols struggle to scale into LRT, but Renzo can capture and efficiently redistribute these rewards to our stakers.
Phase Three, within the next 6–12 months after AVS enables slashing, will focus on portfolio construction. We’ve collaborated with firms like Gauntlet for over three years to develop risk and portfolio modeling frameworks.
Foresight News: You supported networks like Arbitrum, Linea, Mode, Blast, and BNB Chain very quickly—why?
Lucas Kozinski: ETH holders earn yield from the Ethereum mainnet, often arbitraging across chains. Without supporting these L2s, users and TVL would drain away. Renzo brings restaking to L2s, letting users perform native restaking on EigenLayer via Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Linea, Mode, and Blast at lower gas costs, with identical DeFi integrations as on Ethereum mainnet. We bridge this ETH back to Ethereum to contribute to EigenLayer’s shared economic security.
Foresight News: Renzo was the first restaking project after EigenLayer. Compared to peers, what makes Renzo different? What are your key advantages—technically, product-wise, and in the market?
Lucas Kozinski: We’re the first restaking project built entirely from scratch—with a new team, new investors, new community, new TVL, and new integrations. Renzo doesn’t issue an LST token, yet delivers native ETH yield. The difference is we avoid outdated models requiring issuance of floating-rate notes.
Most importantly, Renzo uses a single-token model, not dual-token. We don’t use rebase or reward-bearing tokens, nor rely on separate LST/LRT tokens for efficiency. Our architecture scales seamlessly, avoids fragmented liquidity, and maintains high integration density. Fundamentally, we have a clean, efficient tech stack that securely protects AVSs and returns rewards to users with low risk.
Foresight News: Many restaking projects compete on deposits and points, but liquidity is critical for blockchains, DeFi, and LRTs alike. What utilities does ezETH offer as an LRT asset? What future use cases do you envision? Will we see DeFi apps built on Renzo/ezETH?
Lucas Kozinski: The ETH restaking market has already decided ezETH is the most liquid asset. ezETH will integrate with many protocols, and its use cases and adoption will grow steadily. What excites us most is falling Rollup costs—Rollups and L2s on Ethereum will explode. We must now build the entire ecosystem, integrate widely, and expand use cases. There will be many specialized Rollups focused on DeFi or user apps. Just like AltLayer today, you’ll launch a Rollup in 3–5 days. These Rollups will adopt LRTs—especially using ezETH as their gas token.
Foresight News: Recently, you partnered with Polyhedra Network to provide $1.8 billion in cryptoeconomic security for its Bitcoin interoperability protocol. Can you elaborate on how you plan to expand into the Bitcoin ecosystem?
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo will focus on securing Bitcoin services by providing economic guarantees. Projects like Babylon have drawn significant interest, and Renzo aims to serve as a restaking token for these ecosystems. We’re having many discussions, though no commitments yet. But conversations continue, and relationships are forming.
Foresight News: Cobo previously published an article titled “Risks and Best Practices for EigenLayer Restaking,” highlighting contract risk, LST risk, and withdrawal risks in current restaking protocols. How does Renzo manage and protect user assets?
Lucas Kozinski: Like any DeFi protocol, I ensure the community understands default risks. From day one, Renzo hired auditors, open-sourced smart contracts, and re-audits every upgrade. We run an Immunefi bug bounty program and use institutional-grade node operators. Renzo also employs on-chain monitoring tools like Hexagate to detect malicious activity. If suspicious behavior occurs, deposits and withdrawals automatically pause.
We proceed cautiously, gradually introducing new features and risks. Withdrawals are currently disabled—not because of technical unreadiness, but because Renzo has only been live for 14 weeks, and EigenLayer is still on M1 contracts, upgrading to M2 ahead of AVS mainnet launch. All other withdrawal-related changes have a 10-day timelock. Now, we must upgrade contracts—including withdrawal logic—re-audit, then enable withdrawals on mainnet.
Because updating code introduces additional risk, Renzo strategically decided not to enable withdrawals on M1. Though the team is ready, we’re waiting for EigenLayer to finalize upgrades so Renzo can begin securing AVSs. Then, we’ll enable withdrawals on both contracts—but with a cooldown period to detect vulnerabilities or attackers. If issues arise, the Renzo protocol, foundation, and DAO can pause withdrawals.
III. "We Believe Everything Will Come Back to Ethereum"
Foresight News: What’s Renzo’s roadmap and future outlook for 2024?
Lucas Kozinski: First, deeper DeFi integration on mainnet. As the first LRT protocol, we’re seeing governance proposals from Compound, Aave, and Morpho to accept ezETH as collateral. We’re also partnering with MakerDAO to make ezETH a DAI-backed asset.
Second, ezETH will expand to exchange-led chains like X Layer and BNB Chain, integrating with CEXs so users can buy and hold ezETH directly on Coinbase, OKX, and Binance. Our goal is clear: start on Ethereum mainnet, expand to L2s, then move into DEXs and CEXs. This opens new products and integrations for retail users on centralized exchanges—and platforms like Coinbase Prime, OKX, and Binance will support Renzo. Going forward, we’ll integrate with Fireblocks, Ankr, Ledger, MetaMask, and wallets like Binance Web3 Wallet, OKX Web3 Wallet, and Coinbase Wallet.
Third, Renzo will focus on EigenLayer governance, portfolio construction, and risk management—likely extending through year-end. We’ll explore new L2 opportunities, partner with ecosystem projects, and ensure ezETH settles as gas across chains. For users, depositing wrapped ETH into Renzo will let them access new yield streams with one click—no need to become a liquidity provider on DEXs or lending protocols.
Foresight News: Renzo hasn’t released any token details yet. Can you share anything? How long will the points campaign last? What utility will the Renzo token have?
Lucas Kozinski: I can’t say much here—we avoid setting community expectations. As I said earlier, ezETH will be everywhere, with growing utility. Renzo’s ultimate goal is universal access to ezETH and free staking. I won’t set a timeline for the points program. Web3 moves too fast—project teams often mislead communities by promising things they can’t deliver.
Foresight News: How do modular blockchains like Celestia impact Ethereum—what threats and opportunities do they present?
Lucas Kozinski: We’re seeing more narratives and attention around restaking and modularity. Adoption will rise, and future use cases will expand. As Renzo matures, the DAO will have room to understand what this truly means and what risks it’s willing to take. This isn’t zero-sum—it’s about growing the pie so everyone benefits. The larger the restaking narrative grows, the more opportunities there are for everyone in the ecosystem to participate and succeed.
Foresight News: Where does restaking derive its value? What innovations and challenges lie ahead for the restaking sector?
Lucas Kozinski: Let’s start with challenges. This is an extremely complex ecosystem. As more projects build in restaking, fragmentation and variation will increase. Renzo is working closely with EigenLayer operators and AVSs to solve these. For us, this means more chances to boost efficiency and extract value for stakers. The core challenge? Simplifying everything. How do we abstract away complexity for users? That’s where value is created—and where we’re most excited.
I believe the next cycle will still be Ethereum. Today, when people think Ethereum, they think Rollups, Base, or large DeFi ecosystems. What we haven’t seen yet in Web3 is explosive growth in real user-facing applications. People don’t typically use blockchains as settlement layers for transactions due to high costs—but restaking and Rollups can solve that. We’ll see massive innovation, even if we don’t yet know exactly what services or apps people will build. Fundamentally, launching on L2s and L3s will become easy and cheap. The next cycle will bring many specialized applications, each needing new AVS services. These AVS launches won’t just generate extra yield and rewards for Renzo holders—they’ll also expand into other ecosystems.
We believe everything will come back to Ethereum. Today, Base’s transaction cost is lower than Solana’s—and it’s fully decentralized. But one thing remains: user experience. If you’re an Ethereum developer, you no longer need to spend tens of millions on infrastructure—just focus on building great user-facing products.
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