Ether.fi Ventures backs Blockspace to professionalize Ethereum’s off-protocol infrastructure

Ether.fi Ventures just wrote a check for Blockspace, a new commercial entity built to improve and monetize the Ethereum infrastructure that exists outside the core protocol.

Blockspace isn’t trying to reinvent the protocol. It’s targeting the layer of infrastructure that already handles over 90% of Ethereum’s blockspace flow, the relays, builders, searchers, and order flow mechanics that most users never see but depend on for every transaction they send.

What Blockspace actually does

Blockspace is positioning itself as a dedicated team focused exclusively on professionalizing this layer, with two notable constraints baked in from day one.

First, it will monetize exclusively in ETH. Not stablecoins, not governance tokens, not equity. ETH.

Second, Blockspace has imposed a self-cap on its own stake at 15%. That’s a deliberate ceiling designed to prevent the kind of centralization creep that keeps Ethereum researchers up at night.

The team is led by Drew Van der Werff, who has been building connections with other influential Ethereum infrastructure teams including Gattaca and Ultrasound Money. The thesis tying all of this together is refreshingly simple: a commercially successful Ethereum ecosystem benefits everyone who participates in it.

Ether.fi’s expanding infrastructure empire

Back in April 2026, ether.fi committed $3 billion in ETH to ETHGas, a platform for blockspace forward markets. That deal let validators and blockspace consumers hedge future block inclusion costs, essentially creating a futures market for Ethereum transactions.

The Blockspace investment extends that same logic. If ETHGas was about creating financial instruments for blockspace, Blockspace itself is about making the underlying infrastructure robust enough to support those instruments at scale.

Ether.fi’s core business, liquid restaking, gives it a natural interest in every layer of Ethereum’s value chain. The protocol has grown to multi-billion dollar TVL levels and raised a $23 million Series A back in 2024.

The commercialization of Ethereum’s plumbing

Over 90% of Ethereum’s blockspace currently flows through out-of-protocol infrastructure. That means the vast majority of Ethereum’s block production depends on systems that aren’t part of the protocol’s consensus rules. Until now, there hasn’t been a single commercial entity whose entire job is to make that surface area work better.

What this means for investors

For ETH holders, the ETH-only monetization model is a quiet but meaningful detail. Every dollar of revenue Blockspace generates creates organic demand for ETH.

The 15% stake cap is worth watching closely. If Blockspace sticks to it as it scales, it could establish a new norm for infrastructure providers in the ecosystem.

The risk, of course, is concentration. When a small number of well-funded entities control the infrastructure that routes 90% of blockspace, the network’s censorship resistance and neutrality guarantees start depending on voluntary commitments like stake caps rather than structural decentralization.