The risk stack
Risk premium: is the restaking APY worth it?
Extra yield from restaking, divided by the extra expected annual loss it adds. Above 2× is comfortable compensation, below 1× means you're taking on more expected loss than you're being paid for.
Adding AVS protocols: risk-adjusted APY by count
Same restaking premium, same per-protocol slashing odds — only the number of AVS changes. Each one is an independent slashing condition stacked on the same collateral.
| AVS count | P(≥1 slash/yr) | Risk-adj APY |
|---|
The tail risk nobody prices: bridge exploits
In April 2026, Kelp DAO — one of the largest liquid restaking protocols — suffered a $280-293M exploit when an attacker drained rsETH via a LayerZero cross-chain bridge vulnerability, the largest single DeFi exploit of 2026 to that point. That's not a slashing event; it's the smart-contract/bridge risk line in this calculator, and it dwarfs years of accumulated slashing risk in one shot. At your inputs, a single exploit event costs roughly — of your restaked position — a number worth sitting with before chasing the extra few points of AVS yield.
Why restaking's headline APY is the wrong number
Every liquid restaking dashboard shows one number — the combined APY of base staking plus AVS rewards — because that's the number that gets clicks. It's also the number that hides the entire point of restaking: you're re-pledging the same collateral to secure additional, independent protocols, and each one can slash you. A 9.5% headline APY built from 3.5% base staking plus 6% restaking premium isn't a 9.5% yield if the expected annual loss from the risk stack is running at 1-1.5% of capital — it's really closer to 8%, and that gap is invisible until you compute it explicitly, which is what this calculator does.
The two risk sources behave completely differently. Slashing is usually the smaller number in expectation — validators are economically incentivized to stay online and honest, and per-protocol slashing odds are typically well under 1% a year with loss severities in the low single digits. But it stacks: run 8 AVS instead of 2 and the probability that at least one slashes you in a given year climbs meaningfully, even though no individual protocol got riskier. Smart-contract and bridge risk is the opposite shape — low annual probability, but a tail event that can wipe 30-100% of the position in one transaction, as the April 2026 Kelp DAO/LayerZero exploit demonstrated at $280M+ scale.
That asymmetry is why this calculator separates the two instead of blending them into one "risk %" slider. If your risk-adjusted APY comes out close to or below plain staking, the restaking premium isn't compensating you for the extra layer — you're providing free insurance to the protocols using your collateral. If it comes out comfortably ahead, you're being paid appropriately, but the tail-risk dollar figure is still worth knowing before you decide how much of your stack to commit.