ETHFI Leads Liquid Staking Revival as DOT Slides 7%

Ether.fi's ETHFI posted the sharpest 24-hour gain in CoinGecko's top-100 as of 09:00 UTC on 12 Sep, rising 9.3% and climbing three ranks to 91 — a quiet but pointed signal that liquid-restaking appetite has not fully cooled heading into the weekend.

The headline move and its counterpart

ETHFI's gain stands in direct contrast to DOT, which shed 7.1% and fell four ranks to 50 — the session's steepest top-100 decline. The pairing is thematic: one Ethereum-native staking derivative climbing while a legacy interoperability L1 retreats.

Token	Rank	Delta	24h
ETHFI Ether.fi	91→91	▲ 3	▲ 9.3%
AAVE Aave	48→45	▲ 3	▲ 2.8%
DOT Polkadot	46→50	▼ 4	▼ 7.1%
ATOM Cosmos Hub	79→81	▼ 2	▼ 6.7%

Aave's 2.8% gain and three-rank climb to 45 reinforces the DeFi-native bid, while Cosmos Hub (ATOM) joined DOT in retreat with a 6.7% drop — both older interoperability chains losing ground in the same window.

Pattern

Ethereum DeFi infrastructure gained while cross-chain L1 incumbents from the 2021 cycle gave back ground across the same 24-hour window.