Eigenlayer EIGEN has released a white paper, banning airdrops for US users
Ethereum staking protocol Eigenlayer released a white paper on April 29 for its proposed new token EIGEN. The token will be used for interface agreement-based applications such as prediction markets, storage services and gaming virtual machines, the white paper said. Several jurisdictions, including the United States and Canada, are excluded from the upcoming airdrop.
Eigenlayer is a blockchain network that uses staked Ether (ETH) as its native coin. Users who hold Ether on Ethereum can “re-hold” it for Eigenlayer and earn additional stake rewards by confirming transactions on both networks. The developers say this solution is more secure than using a separate token, as it allows eigenlayer to inherit Ethereum's security rather than creating trust from scratch.
According to the new white paper, staked Ether will continue to be used to build consensus around verifiable information on the chain, such as the authenticity of transactions.
Related: What is an EigenLayer? Ethereum's reset protocol explained.
The paper notes that some information cannot be verified as true or false on-chain, but can still be easily verified by real people. “1 [Bitcoin] BTC = 1 dollar [US Dollar]” is an example of a statement that can easily be proven false using widely available off-chain data. Eigenlayer says the new EIGEN token can be used to build consensus around these types of statements, which he calls “high agreement with overlapping faults.”
EIGEN builds on the previous work of August, which created the REP token to allow the recognition of mutual agreements, the paper explained. However, REP states that it was built specifically for evaluation markets, while EIGEN is intended to be a “universal” interoperable signal with applications outside of this use case. In addition, the EIGEN token can be excluded from decentralized finance (DeFi) applications during a fork, to measure the cost of social consensus and compensate users who accidentally lost EIGEN, the team said.
The team says these features make EIGEN uniquely suited to be a “universal working token” for tasks that cannot be defined empirically. It lists several applications the token could be used in, including prediction markets, storage services, cloud microservices, gaming virtual machines, order matching engines, databases, artificial intelligence (AI) training, and other uses.
According to the Eigenlayer document, 5% of the total supply of EIGEN has been allocated to current users who have already re-owned ETH through the network. These marks were placed in March 15 is after the screenshot was taken. Additional points will be awarded to participants who participated in “Season 2,” which will begin immediately after the snapshot. The team has not announced when Season 2 will end.
After the paper was published, crypto trader and X user Defy Easy speculated that the Eigenlayer team might be preparing to ship the new token to users. As evidence for this view, post a link to a “claims” website report by the Eigenlayer team.
The website will generate a 404 error when viewed from a US IP address and multiple VPN server addresses in Europe. According to Eigenlayer documentation, the United States, Canada and several countries in Africa and Asia will not participate in the airdrop.
On April 22, anonymous developer Chudnov said that Eginlayer may soon face a “productivity crisis” as the value of assets locked on the platform is growing faster than it needs to keep the network secure. According to reports by QuickNode and Artemis on April 18, re-sustainability on Eigenlayer is one of the biggest drivers of new assets for the DeFi ecosystem.
Update (04-29-2024 8:12 PM UTC): This article has been updated to clarify the percentage of EIGEN supply allocated to consumers in Season 1.
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