KAST vs Ether.fi, head to head, all on-chain.
The two crypto cards fighting for the top of the category, measured for June 2026 — a record month for both. KAST loaded $199.0M; Ether.fi settled $83.4M of spend across more than a million swipes. On money loaded KAST is the bigger number; on verifiable on-chain spend, Ether.fi is ahead. Two products, opposite behavior.
Both cards just printed all-time highs. KAST loaded $199.0M in June; Ether.fi settled $83.4M of spend across more than a million swipes — the crypto-card category is at record volume.
KAST is bigger on money in ($199.0M loaded vs $108.8M), users and dollars-per-user. Ether.fi's spend is fully verifiable on-chain ($83.4M); KAST's swipes clear off-chain, so its $77.3M is only the visible slice — its true spend is likely higher.
Both retain strongly: 74% of KAST's June users and 80% of Ether.fi's had transacted before. Neither churns — they just transact differently.
Different shapes: KAST loads in chunks ($397 median per user, $261 median load, 2.3 loads/mo, spends down off-chain); Ether.fi swipes constantly ($11 median purchase, ~26 swipes/mo) — a daily driver.
The whole comparison — one table
Everything below, condensed into three lanes: where KAST leads, where Ether.fi leads, and where they're simply different. Bold marks the leader within its own lane only — there is no overall winner.
| Metric | ||
|---|---|---|
| Scale — KAST's lane | ||
| Money loaded | $199.0M · ATH | $108.8M |
| Load transactions | 244,447 | 99,938 |
| Monthly active users | 62,547 | 37,051 |
| Cumulative users | 226,175 | 86,655 |
| Per-user & proof — Ether.fi's lane | ||
| Avg loaded per loading user | $3,182 | $4,220 |
| Returning users (both strong) | 74% | 80% |
| Verifiable on-chain spend | $77.3M (floor — swipes off-chain) | $83.4M (complete) · ATH |
| Visible card swipes | not observable (custodial) | 1.03M swipes · $11 median |
| Custody | Custodial (top-up = sale to KAST) | Non-custodial (your weETH, 55% LTV) |
| Structure — different species, both at ATH | ||
| How users behave | $261 loads × 2.3/mo, spend down off-chain | $11 × 26 swipes/mo, daily driver |
| Beyond the card | Solana validator · 177K SOL ≈ $14M delegated | Staking protocol · $3.12B TVL |
| Revenue (est / yr) | ~$32M card | ~$55M staking + ~$20M card |
| Funding / valuation | $90M raised · ~$600M private | $32M raised · $362M public mcap |
| Token | Retired Jul 2026 → equity conversion | ETHFI live (−95% from ATH) |
| Legal structure | Private co. (Anjouan, Comoros) | DAO + public protocol |
No overall winner. KAST is the biggest and fastest-growing top-up card; Ether.fi is the most provable spend card, with stronger per-user economics and a $3.1B protocol behind it. Both just printed all-time highs, both keep roughly 3 in 4 users month over month — different categories, and room for both.
"Avg loaded per loading user" = top-up volume ÷ top-up users, same source both sides (Ether.fi's 25,784 loading users are a subset of its 37,051 spend actives). Verifiable spend is asymmetric: Ether.fi's is complete, KAST's is the on-chain floor. Validator stake is Stakewiz-verified in SOL terms; TVL declines are stated in both USD and ETH terms. Valuations are media-reported. Details and sourcing in the sections below.
The head-to-head (June 2026)
Whole-program figures from Paymentscan — a complete, record month. The winning side of each row is highlighted.
| Metric | ||
|---|---|---|
| Money loaded (top-ups) · gross float in — like-for-like | $199.0M | $108.8M |
| Top-up transactions · count of loads — like-for-like | 244,447 | 99,938 |
| On-chain settled volume · Ether.fi = full spend · KAST = partial (settlement proxy) | $77.3M* | $83.4M |
| Monthly active users | 62,547 | 37,051 |
| Returning users · came back this month vs prior — like-for-like, both high | 74% | 80% |
| Cumulative users · lifetime, deduped | 226,175 | 86,655 |
Loads, users and returning-user rate are measured the same way for both cards, so those rows compare directly — and on retention both come back strong (KAST 74%, Ether.fi 80%). KAST's $199.0M is money loaded (float in), not spend.*On-chain settled volume is not symmetric: Ether.fi's $83.4M is its full retail spend (every Optimism dispatcher and token, cross-checked vs Dune); KAST's $77.3M is only the issuer settlement visible on-chain — its retail swipes clear off-chain (custodial), so KAST's true spend is likely higher but not fully observable. That row is left unscored.Purchase behavior isn't compared: KAST's swipes aren't observable, so its load count can't be set against Ether.fi's 1,029,959 swipes ($11 median) — those are shown in the wallet-level data below. Highlights mark the larger side only — not a quality ranking.
Month over month ($M)
Six months of Paymentscan whole-program history — safe to trend (the wallet-level crawl below is one clean month and is not). MoM = May→June; 6-mo = Jan→June.
| Metric | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | MoM | 6-mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KAST — loaded | 132.8 | 143.7 | 143.5 | 144.0 | 174.7 | 199.0 | +14% | +50% |
| KAST — settled spend | 57.7 | 56.0 | 60.1 | 66.6 | 76.2 | 77.3 | +1% | +34% |
| Ether.fi — loaded | 130.0 | 88.9 | 124.0 | 101.1 | 113.2 | 108.8 | -4% | -16% |
| Ether.fi — spend | 54.3 | 53.2 | 62.6 | 65.7 | 80.4 | 83.4 | +4% | +54% |
Both cards have grown settled spend ~50% in six months. But the shapes differ: KAST's loads are accelerating (+14% MoM) while its on-chain settlement is flattening (+1%) — float is building up. Ether.fi's loads are flat-to-down (−16% over six months) yet its spend keeps climbing (+54%) — users spend more of what they hold.
The wallet-level data
One month, on-chain, infra-scrubbed. Per-user distributions, not spend totals — each figure labeled by what it measures.
| Metric | ||
|---|---|---|
| Wallets tracked | 32,714 | 31,663 |
| Measured on | top-up / load | settlement / spend |
| Money moved / user (median) | $397 · loaded | $257 · spent |
| Median transaction | $261 · single load | $11 · purchase |
| Transactions / user | 2.3 · loads/mo | 26 · swipes/mo |
| Card swipes (month) | off-chain — not observable | 1,029,959 |
| Top-10% share | 81% | 75% |
| Holds a balance | not measurable | NA (credit) |
On money moved per user, KAST is higher— a median of $397 loaded vs Ether.fi's $257 spent. The two cards just move it differently: KAST's 2.3 is monthly loads(users top up in ~$397 chunks a couple times a month, then draw the card down off-chain), while Ether.fi's 26 is actual card swipes — a daily driver. That transaction count is a difference in behavior, not engagement: a KAST user who loads once still spends all month, we just can't see the swipes. Real retention — did the customer come back this month — is in the head-to-head above (KAST 74%, Ether.fi 80%; both high). "Holds a balance": KAST is pooled off-chain (not observable); Ether.fi is credit against collateral (no on-card balance by design). Wallet sample: 32.7K funder wallets, EVM+Tron — a portion of KAST's base (custodial load side; capture since May 2026; Solana excluded).
Card profiles
What the on-chain data shows for each card — labeled by what it measures.
The divergence — staking vs the card
Ether.fi's staking TVL (DefiLlama) against its card spend (our on-chain data), 2026. As restaking cools, the card is becoming the growth engine.
| Ether.fi | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Staking TVL ($B) | 8.26 | 5.66 | 5.31 | 5.37 | 3.69 | 2.85 | -65% |
| Card spend ($M) | 54.3 | 53.2 | 62.6 | 65.7 | 80.4 | 83.4 | +54% |
| Card as % of TVL | 0.66% | 0.94% | 1.18% | 1.22% | 2.18% | 2.93% | 4.4× |
Ether.fi's USD TVL fell 65% over six months — roughly −36% in ETH terms (ETH itself fell 46%) — while its card spend rose 54%. Card spend is stablecoin-denominated, so that growth is real dollars, immune to the price drawdown. KAST's validator shows a similar shape (delegated stake 329K → 177K SOL since late June, though a few large delegators dominate that pool, so single exits move it). On both sides the staking story is shrinking and the card is the durable business.
Company & business model
Funding, valuation, token and staking — sourced from DefiLlama, CoinGecko and public filings/press.
| What it is | A card company — custodial stablecoin money-app + Visa card | A staking protocol (#2 liquid-staking) with a card bolted on |
| Custody model | Custodial — ToS: top-up = sale to KAST | Non-custodial — spend against your own weETH (55% LTV) |
| Total raised | ~$90M ($10M seed + $80M Series A) | ~$32M private + public ETHFI token |
| Last round / valuation | $80M Series A, Mar 2026 — ~$600M (private) | $23M Series A, Feb 2024; ETHFI mcap ~$362M (public) |
| Lead backers | QED, Left Lane, Peak XV/HongShan, DST Global | Bullish Capital, CoinFund, OKX Ventures, Consensys |
| Token | $KAST KILLED Jul 2026 → illiquid equity | ETHFI live · $362M mcap · 93% circulating · −95% from ATH |
| Legal entity | KAST Tech — Anjouan, Comoros (offshore) | ether.fi DAO + protocol |
Staking / validator — the sharpest gap
KAST runs a small Solana validator as a loyalty perk; Ether.fi is a $3B staking protocol. ~220× apart.
| Staking operation | Runs ONE Solana validator (Kiln, 0% fee) | IS a staking + EigenLayer restaking protocol |
| Stake / TVL | ~$13.9M (177,096 SOL, live) | $3.12B TVL |
| Recent trend | 329K → 177K SOL, Jun 26–Jul 6 (−46%; a few large delegators dominate, so single exits move it) | $8.4B → $2.85B USD in 6 months (−65% USD; ~−36% in ETH terms — ETH itself fell 46%) |
| Why it exists | Loyalty perk — cardholders earn KAST points | The core product — weETH earns yield |
| Yield generated (1y) | n/a | $236M fees → $54.6M protocol revenue (7.6% gross APY) |
Ether.fi's $236M "fees" (DefiLlama, 1y) is gross staking yield generated on ~$3.1B of stake — mostly paid to stakers, not kept. Its actual protocol revenue is ~$54.6M/yr (~23% take), vs KAST's ~$32M/yr of card interchange. KAST's validator stake and Ether.fi's TVL are both on-chain-verified; valuations and raise figures are media-reported.
In short.Both cards just hit record volume, and both keep their users — KAST 74% came back, Ether.fi 80%. They just work differently. KAST is a custodial top-up rail: users load big chunks ($397 median per user, more than Ether.fi's $257) and spend down off-chain, so its retail swipes are invisible and the most we can verify on-chain is $77.3M of issuer settlement — its true spend is likely higher. Ether.fi is a credit card whose every swipe settles on-chain: $83.4M of fully verifiable spend across a million-plus tiny purchases ($11 median). KAST leads on money-in, users and dollars-per-user; Ether.fi leads on what's independently verifiable. Neither "wins" spend outright — one shows its work, the other can't. Each figure labeled by what it measures.
How we measured it
Top-line volume (loads, settled spend, transactions, users) is from Paymentscan for June 2026, a complete month. KAST's card spend is custodial and not observable on-chain, so its verifiable figure is $77.3M of issuer-network settlement — a proxy for spend, not the retail swipes. Ether.fi's $83.4M is directly observed retail spend.
Wallet-level distributions (medians, transaction counts, retention) come from OpenRate's on-chain crawl, June 2026 only, with treasury/aggregator/OTC-settler wallets scrubbed. We report medians alongside averages; where a distribution is skewed by a few large wallets (e.g. KAST loads), the median and the average differ materially.
KAST is measured on the top-up side (custodial): 32,714 funder wallets on EVM+Tron. This is a portion of KAST's base — capture began May 2026 and Solana is excluded (its sweep model hides users), so 'returned' may undercount users who first loaded before May.
Ether.fi is measured at settlement (real spend). It settles via 4 dispatchers on Optimism (migrated off Scroll in April 2026) across 7 tokens — we index all of them, USD+EUR stables and liquidUSD alike, and cross-checked the total against Dune.
Because complete spend isn't observable on-chain for KAST, we don't force a single spend total against it — the honest comparison is KAST's loads and issuer settlement vs Ether.fi's observed spend, each labeled by what it measures.
Company data: Ether.fi TVL, fees and revenue are from DefiLlama (live); ETHFI market cap from CoinGecko; KAST's Solana validator stake is read live on-chain; funding rounds and private valuations are media-reported (CoinDesk/The Block/Bloomberg). The 'divergence' chart overlays DefiLlama TVL against our own card-spend index — figures nobody else pairs, so treat the ratio as directional.
On-chain observational analysis; not investment advice. See also The Float Report, cardholder intelligence and card economics.