Overview

When Rio Network issues a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT), it creates a number of contracts that mediate its governance and asset flows. Rio is tightly integrated with EigenLayer and acts as a restaking pool, functionally akin to mining or validator pools, such that it aggregates restaking capital and attempts to optimally route it over an AVS set for the best risk-adjusted return.

With this context, Rio has 5 main functions:

1. Pool user assets and issue LRTs. Rio's contracts collect deposits from users and mint LRTs to account for their value.

2. Delegate assets to professional operators. Operators run Actively Validated Services (AVS) and ensure that all rules are followed to avoid loss of user funds via slashing.

3. Restake capital on EigenLayer. AVS pay Rio rewards for the work Operators provide secured by user assets.

4. Collect and distribute rewards. Rio contracts ensure that all rewards are fairly distributed to users and operators while taking a small coordination fee.

5. Safeguard the network via governance. RioDAO manages proposals to create new LRTs, whitelist operators and AVS, change operational parameters, and spend from the treasury.

The following diagram shows the flow of assets and decisions in more detail using reETH as an example LRT:

Rio Network overview diagram (v1.0)

The Rio Network is composed of one or more Rio Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT), along with the Rio Restaking Router, Rio Reward Router, Rio Treasury, and RioDAO (and subDAOs), and is built upon EigenLayer.

User (Restaker)

Rio Network users (restakers) deposit ETH and receive a proportional amount of reward-bearing reETH tokens.

Users generally interact with the protocol via the Rio Network dApp.

Rio Restaking Router

Rio routes delegations of the underlying ETH to approved Operators.

Rio Rewards Router

Rio routes fees from AVS and Ethereum Validators to reETH holders, RioDAO, and Operators.

Rio Treasury

The Rio Treasury holds $RN tokens and accrued reETH fees.

See the RioDAO/Governance documentation for more details about the $RN token, treasury, and fee management.

RioDAO

The RioDAO is governed by the $RN token and governs aspects of the protocol including:

• LRT creation/configuration

• Rio Treasury spend

• Rio Operator allowlist

• Rio AVS allowlist

• other functionality

See the RioDAO/Governance documentation for more about the RioDAO and subDAOs.

EigenLayer

EigenLayer is a pioneering restaking protocol and a new primitive in crypto-economic security where new services can purchase a portion of Ethereum’s economic security for their own use cases.

This documentation assumes familiarity with terminology from EigenLayer, which you can read more about here.

Operators

Operators are third-party service providers who run an approved AVS set in exchange for fees.

To bootstrap the Rio Network, an initial group of Operators has been curated based on their alignment with the Rio Network's core value of risk management and their category leadership in staking and liquid staking. Going forward, this will be managed by the RioDAO.

AVS

AVS are third-party middleware applications that purchase ETH-backed economic security via EigenLayer from Users (restakers).