While Bitcoin is approaching all-time highs, Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency, has gained over 60% this year. This is the latest indicator that investors are looking for returns and the tendency to take risks in crypto markets is increasing.

At the center of the re-staking frenzy is Seattle-based startup EigenLayer. The company, which received a $100 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto unit arm in February, managed to attract $18.8 billion worth of crypto money to its platform. This figure was below $400 million six months ago.

EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan told Reuters that they invented restaking to expand the long-standing practice of crypto called staking.

Blockchains are a type of database where many computers in a network check and verify who owns which cryptocurrencies. To do this, users consent to locking cryptocurrency tokens such as Ether as part of the verification process. Holders do not lose immediate access to their tokens as long as they participate in staking, but they do receive a return in return.

Some staking platforms also give users newly created coins that represent the cryptocurrencies they have staked. Re-staking allows holders to take these new tokens and stake them again with different blockchain-based programs and applications in the hope of higher returns.

The crypto world is divided on how risky restaking is. Some insiders say this practice is still so new that it’s impossible to know its risks.

But others, including analysts, fear that if new tokens representing re-staking cryptocurrencies are used as collateral in the cryptocurrency market’s vast lending markets, there could be endless cycles of debt backed by a limited number of underlying assets. This could destabilize the broader crypto markets if everyone tries to exit at the same time, they say.

“Having collateral backed collateral is not ideal, it adds a new element of risk that isn’t there,” said Adam Morgan McCarthy, research analyst at crypto data provider Kaiko.

The attraction for investors is the return: Returns from staking on the Ethereum blockchain are typically in the 3-5% range, but analysts say returns for re-staking can be higher because investors can earn multiple returns at once.

Re-staking is the latest development in the risky world of decentralized finance (DeFi). In DeFi, cryptocurrency holders invest in experimental schemes in the hope of earning high returns on their assets without having to dispose of them.

However, the EigenLayer platform has not yet managed to pay staking rewards directly to users because the mechanism to do so has not yet been developed. Users join the platform in anticipation of future rewards or other giveaways known as airdrops.

For now, EigenLayer is giving the new token it created to those who use the platform. Users hope that this token called “EIGEN” will have some value in the future.

Kaiko’s Morgan McCarthy said the growth of restaking platforms is fueled by users seeking such airdrops and that it’s “really, really speculative, this free money thing.”

“It’s very risky,” said David Duong, head of research at U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, which offers staking but not re-staking. “Right now they’re doing it preemptively, in the expectation that they’ll be rewarded with something, but they don’t know what it is,” Duong said.