Interview exclusif avec le fondateur de Renzo : nous croyons que tout reviendra à Ethereum
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Interview exclusif avec le fondateur de Renzo : nous croyons que tout reviendra à Ethereum
Renzo, qui n'a pas pu verser de salaires pendant plusieurs mois, sur quel fondement a-t-il obtenu un investissement de Binance Labs ?
Dédié à des analyses Web3 approfondiesInterview : 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 upcoming AVS services launching on EigenLayer could enable a breakout at the application layer.
The Renzo team is different from what one might imagine. Perhaps you've seen its $3 billion TVL, or noticed funding from VCs such as Binance Labs, Maven11, OKX Ventures, and IOSG—but these are merely 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 built from scratch through sheer determination. Starting their entrepreneurial journey last summer, they operated entirely on personal funds until meeting Maven11 in Turkey in November—none had drawn salaries. This is the second LRT project I’ve heard of this year that went months without paying salaries before securing investment from Binance Labs.
Survivorship bias in the crypto industry is always significant, but Renzo’s success was no accident. Open Renzo’s website and you’ll find integrations with numerous DeFi protocols and Layer2 networks—each reflecting Renzo’s three-phase strategy focused on liquidity, efficiency, and risk management. "We'll start on Ethereum mainnet, expand to L2s, then integrate into DEXs and CEXs. Users will eventually be able to buy and hold ezETH directly on Coinbase, OKX, or Binance," Lucas envisions. "ezETH will be everywhere."
Modularity presents challenges for Ethereum, but in Lucas’ view, it's a positive-sum game rather than zero-sum. As AVSs on EigenLayer go live, lowering development costs for Ethereum developers while allowing shared economic security from Ethereum mainnet, "everything will return to Ethereum."
I. The Crypto Entrepreneurial Journey of Seasoned Veterans
Foresight News: Thank you for joining us. Please introduce yourself, your team, and your experience in the crypto industry.
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo has three founders: myself, James Poole, and Kratik Lodha. All of us have worked full-time in Web3 for six to seven years. 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 field 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 lead, then in early 2020 joined Tokensoft as Head of Business Strategy and COO.
At the end of 2021, I left Tokensoft to found Moonwell—a lending protocol we launched on Moonbeam and Polkadot’s Kusama network. It remains the largest DeFi protocol on Polkadot and the biggest yield farming protocol on Base.
Kratik previously worked at Woodstock Fund, which invested in Moonwell, where we met. In May last year, Kratik left Woodstock, and I also exited Moonwell. From then 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 how far you've come. Why did you choose the restaking赛道, and what motivated you to create Renzo? What kind of project do you hope Renzo 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 promote within the ecosystem and provide grants in the form of liquidity rewards. This structure creates problems—mainly stifling innovation, as only top-tier projects can secure liquidity and funding. With EigenLayer as an open market, we avoid situations where foundations exclusively fund DeFi protocols with liquidity incentives. On EigenLayer, innovation wins: whoever captures market share earliest, achieves the safest and most efficient distribution of liquidity, will ultimately dominate.
Additionally, wherever there is complexity and fragmentation, there’s room to create value for users. When considering the relationship between EigenLayer, its AVSs, and operators, you realize it forms a completely new ecosystem and tech stack. By solving these issues and improving user efficiency, we have abundant opportunities to add value.
Foresight News: What does Renzo’s team structure look like? Where are members located, and how do you collaborate?
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo now has 15 members—we’re growing rapidly. Since December, our team has tripled in size. Most Renzo members are people we’ve known and worked with for years. This matters 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 who entered crypto back in 2016–2017—highly professional with strong execution skills. Having a 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; most members receive compensation directly through it and are official foundation members.
Our team is globally distributed: four in India, one each in Hong Kong, Australia, Budapest, and several in the U.S.—a fully decentralized setup. Every Monday morning, we hold a sync meeting to align perspectives and discuss challenges. For the rest of the week, teams self-organize across time zones. Each day begins with team members posting their tasks and blockers on Slack. Thirty minutes before logging off, they give a brief summary—so we know they’re wrapping up.
Foresight News: What has been the biggest challenge or obstacle during Renzo’s startup journey?
Lucas Kozinski: The hardest moment was right at the beginning—when no one truly 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 ironically, this became Renzo’s strength and reason for success.
Due to pressure and hardship last year, we faced financial difficulties. Not until November, when we met Maven11 in Turkey, did things change. Renzo’s culture is deeply humble—we’re entirely self-reliant, ensuring every dollar is spent wisely. We went months without salaries, everyone working pro bono, essentially using personal funds to push Renzo to market.
It’s hard to grasp how difficult this was—going from nothing, bootstrapping, raising funds, to achieving today’s results. But we learned how to operate under pressure, developed survival instincts, fought hard, executed quickly, and adapted strategies swiftly. 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 Plan: Liquidity, Efficiency, and Risk Management
Foresight News: Could you walk us through Renzo’s current products and business progress?
Lucas Kozinski: Renzo’s roadmap has three phases: Phase One focuses on boosting and allocating liquidity, Phase Two on efficiency improvements, and Phase Three on portfolio-based risk management. Completing all three should take roughly one to one-and-a-half years.
Currently, Renzo is in Phase One—TVL growth and DeFi integration. Within 13 weeks, we’ve 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 excel in liquidity distribution capture significant market share and user trust by strategically allocating liquidity and integrating widely. Without superior products or higher yields, competitors struggle to enter. High yields mean high barriers to entry for rivals. Secondly, we know liquidity is king. Whoever has the deepest liquidity and broadest integrations gains the widest adoption. In fact, Renzo maintains strict standards for liquidity—we even offer Chainlink price feeds, something no other LRT protocol provides. While the market often tracks TVL as a leading indicator, we use liquidity depth and DeFi integration as true measures of leadership.
Phase Two is about efficiency. EigenLayer is complex—it runs atop Ethereum mainnet, where every transaction incurs gas fees, significantly reducing net yields and staker returns. That’s the inefficiency we aim to fix. Next month, as AVSs launch on EigenLayer, we’ll deploy efficient mechanisms to return AVS-generated rewards directly to stakers. Traditional LST protocols face scalability hurdles when transitioning to LRTs, but Renzo can capture and efficiently redistribute rewards to our stakers.
Phase Three, expected within the next 6–12 months after AVS slashing functionality activates, involves building diversified portfolios. We’ve collaborated with firms like Gauntlet for over three years to develop robust risk and portfolio construction frameworks.
Foresight News: You’ve supported networks like Arbitrum, Linea, Mode, Blast, and BNB Chain in a short time. What drove this strategy?
Lucas Kozinski: ETH holders earn yield from Ethereum mainnet, and users arbitrage across chains back to mainnet. Without supporting these L2s, users and their TVL would drift away. Renzo brings restaking to L2s, enabling users on Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Linea, Mode, and Blast to natively restake on EigenLayer at lower gas costs, with identical DeFi integrations as on Ethereum mainnet. We bridge this ETH back to mainnet, contributing to EigenLayer’s shared economic security.
Foresight News: As the first restaking project after EigenLayer, how does Renzo differ from competitors? What are your key advantages across technology, product, and market positioning?
Lucas Kozinski: We’re the first restaking project built entirely from scratch—with a fresh team, new investors, new community, new TVL, and new integrations. Renzo doesn’t issue an LST token, yet delivers native ETH yield. Crucially, we don’t issue floating-rate notes—a legacy approach. Our single-token model avoids the outdated dual-token (LST/LRT) architecture. This gives Renzo superior scalability, unified liquidity, and seamless integrations. Fundamentally, we possess a clean, efficient tech stack capable of securely protecting AVSs and returning rewards to users with minimal risk.
Foresight News: Many restaking projects compete fiercely on deposits and points. Yet liquidity remains critical for blockchains, DeFi, and LRTs alike. What utilities does ezETH offer as an LRT asset? What future use cases are planned? Will we see DeFi apps built on Renzo/ezETH?
Lucas Kozinski: The ETH restaking market has already recognized ezETH as the most liquid asset. ezETH will integrate with more protocols, expanding use cases and adoption. We’re particularly excited about falling Rollup costs—Rollups and L2s on Ethereum are poised for explosive growth. We must now build the entire ecosystem, deepen integrations, and broaden use cases. Expect many specialized Rollups tailored for DeFi or consumer apps. Just like AltLayer today, launching a Rollup takes 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 your expansion 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 within those ecosystems. We’re holding many discussions, though no commitments are finalized 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 risks, LST risks, 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 inherent risks of using default settings. From day one, Renzo hired auditors, open-sourced smart contracts, and re-audited every upgrade. We launched an Immunefi bug bounty program and use institutional-grade node operators. Renzo also employs on-chain monitoring tools like Hexagate to detect malicious activity. Any suspicious on-chain behavior triggers automatic pauses on deposits and fast withdrawals.
We proceed cautiously, gradually introducing new features and associated risks. Withdrawals are currently disabled—not because of technical unreadiness, but because Renzo has only been live for 14 weeks, and EigenLayer is still operating on M1 contracts while upgrading to M2 ahead of AVS mainnet launch. All withdrawal-related changes have a 10-day timelock. Upgrading contracts—including withdrawal logic—requires re-auditing before mainnet activation.
Because code updates introduce additional risks, Renzo made the strategic decision not to enable withdrawals on M1 contracts for now. Though the team is ready, we’re waiting for EigenLayer to finalize upgrades so Renzo can begin securing AVSs. Once ready, withdrawals will activate across both contracts—but with a cooling-off period to detect vulnerabilities or malicious actors. If issues arise, the Renzo protocol, foundation, and DAO retain the ability to pause withdrawals.
III. "We Believe Everything Will Return to Ethereum"
Foresight News: What is Renzo’s roadmap and vision for 2024?
Lucas Kozinski: First, deeper DeFi integrations on mainnet. As the first LRT protocol, we’re seeing governance proposals from major lending platforms like Compound, Aave, and Morpho to accept ezETH as collateral. We’re also partnering with MakerDAO to list ezETH as collateral for DAI minting.
Second, expanding ezETH to exchange-led blockchains like X Layer and BNB Chain, and integrating with CEXs. Ultimately, users will be able to buy and hold ezETH directly on Coinbase, OKX, and Binance. Our goal is clear: start from Ethereum mainnet, expand to L2s, then move from L2s into decentralized exchanges—and eventually onto centralized exchanges. This won’t just unlock new products and integrations for retail users on CEXs, but also gain support from institutional-facing services like Coinbase Prime, OKX, and Binance. Going forward, we’ll integrate with Fireblocks, Ankr, Ledger, MetaMask, and wallets including Binance Web3 Wallet, OKX Web3 Wallet, and Coinbase Wallet.
Third, Renzo will focus on EigenLayer governance, portfolio construction, and risk management—efforts likely extending through year-end. We’ll explore new L2 opportunities and partner with ecosystem projects to ensure ezETH serves as a settlement gas token across chains. For users, depositing wrapped ETH into Renzo means accessing new yield streams instantly—without needing to become a liquidity provider on DEXs or lending protocols.
Foresight News: Renzo hasn’t disclosed any token details yet. Can you share anything? For example, how long will the current points campaign last? What utility will the Renzo token have?
Lucas Kozinski: I can’t reveal much here. We try not to set expectations for the community. As I said earlier, ezETH will be everywhere, with countless uses. Renzo’s ultimate goal is universal access to ezETH and free staking. I can’t give a timeline for the points program, but Web3 evolves too fast. A common mistake projects make is misleading communities with promises they may not fulfill.
Foresight News: What threats and opportunities do modular blockchains like Celestia pose to Ethereum?
Lucas Kozinski: We’re seeing more narratives around restaking and modularity gaining attention. Adoption will rise, and future use cases will multiply. As Renzo matures, the DAO will have time to assess what this truly means and what risks it’s willing to take. This isn’t a zero-sum game. The bigger the restaking narrative grows, the larger the pie becomes—everyone benefits.
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 increase. Renzo is working closely with EigenLayer operators and AVS teams to address these. For us, this means greater opportunity to improve efficiency and extract value for stakers. The core challenge is simplification—how do we abstract away all complexity for users? Because that’s where real value lies, and that’s what excites us.
I believe the next cycle will still be Ethereum. Today, talking about Ethereum means discussing Rollups, Base, or large DeFi ecosystems. What we haven’t seen yet in Web3 is an explosion of real user-facing applications. People generally don’t use blockchains as settlement layers for transactions due to high costs—but restaking and Rollups can solve that. Massive innovation is coming, 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 extremely cheap. The next cycle will bring many custom-built applications requiring new AVS services. These emerging AVS applications won’t just generate extra yields and reward opportunities for Renzo holders—they’ll expand into other ecosystems as well.
We believe everything will return to Ethereum. Today, Base’s transaction cost is lower than Solana’s—and it’s fully decentralized. But one thing remains to be solved: user experience. If you're an Ethereum developer, you won't need to spend tens of millions on infrastructure—just focus on building great user-facing products.
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