In this edition of “Behind mETH Protocol,” we sit down with Jess, Ecosystem Lead, to talk about how she’s helping shape the future of liquid staking and restaking through partnerships.

With experience in BD and Sales at Fireblocks, and time as an analyst at Chainlink, Jess brings both institutional depth and crypto-native perspective. We cover her path into crypto, what drew her to mETH Protocol, and the ecosystems she’s most excited about.

How does your previous experience as an analyst at Chainlink influence the way you evaluate potential partnerships at mETH Protocol?

• "At Chainlink, I worked under the Chainlink BUILD team, which is their accelerator program focused on supporting strong early-stage projects. That experience gave me a structured way of thinking about ecosystem quality — how to evaluate projects based on things like long-term utility, community strength, developer activity, and product-market fit. It also emphasized the importance of mutual value creation. At mETH, I apply the same lens when assessing partnerships. I’m always looking at where there’s potential for two-way utility and how we can plug into ecosystems that are actively building for the long term."

What kind of builders or projects are you most excited about bringing into the mETH ecosystem this year?

• “I’m really excited about how HyperEVM is shaping up. It has a strong DeFi foundation and healthy capital flow, which creates a lot of room to build new staking and restaking primitives. We’re already seeing creative use cases emerge, and I think this year we’ll have a real shot at defining what restaked ETH can unlock in a new and fast-growing ecosystem.
• On the institutional front, mETH Protocol is doubling down. There’s a major opportunity to expand CeDeFi-style strategies — especially building on our strong presence with Bybit, where we’ve already seen success in bridging DeFi and institutional access. We want to replicate that model and make DeFi feel more accessible, secure, and familiar for a broader set of institutional users. It also ties closely into Mantle’s broader strategy, and we see real potential for synergy across the ecosystem as those pieces come together.”

Where do you see the biggest opportunity for growth in the liquid restaking space?

• ''Simplifying the experience. Restaking is powerful, but it’s still complicated for most users, especially for institutions. We’re tackling that in two ways: first, through education, by breaking down how LRTs work and what the risks and rewards are. And second, through products like our fixed yield vault, which abstracts away the complexity and makes it easier to onboard capital without requiring deep DeFi knowledge. If we can make restaking more approachable, we’ll open the door to a much broader set of users.”

How do you see mETH Protocol evolving as institutional interest in crypto increasingly grows?

• ''Institutional interest is real, but the expectations around on-chain DeFi understanding, compliance, and risk are very different from retail. mETH Protocol has the potential to serve as a key building block for institutions who want ETH-native yield exposure in a modular, risk-aware way. I see us leaning more into partnerships with custodians, supporting structured products, and offering vault strategies that feel familiar to traditional finance. The goal is to make LSTs and LRTs usable and trustworthy at scale.
• We’re leaning into partnerships with custodians, CEXs, and various distribution partners to support the creation of structured products, and designing vault strategies that feel familiar to traditional finance. The goal is to make LSTs and LRTs not just accessible, but actually usable and trusted at scale.
• This can mean offering a simple, reliable yield solution for idle ETH or serving as yield-bearing cross-margin collateral for high-frequency trading firms. These are the kinds of integrations that make restaked ETH not just a DeFi product, but part of a broader financial strategy for sophisticated players.''

What's a piece of writing that you still think about now and then?

• ''There’s not one specific post or tweet that stands out for me. Lately, what’s been more impactful is just watching how the space is shifting. Projects like UniversalX, Infinex, and DeFiapp are showing that teams are starting to really prioritize simplicity and composability. They're leaning into chain abstraction, hiding complexity from the user while still making full use of what’s possible under the hood.
• It’s a trend that reinforces a lot of what we’re building at Mantle. We’re not just launching isolated products, we’re creating a connected system. Assets like mETH and FBTC are designed to flow across DeFi strategies, vaults, and institutional products. When you combine that with our L2, index fund, and broader initiatives like banking and AI, the focus is on building something where each piece strengthens the next.
• We make sure everything that we do connects, compounds, and creates real, usable value for users.''

Reach Jess on X here: @JessZeng1101