Ethereum Foundation to have a policy of interest after EigenLayer crossovers
The Ethereum Foundation will establish a policy on conflicts of interest, CEO Aya Miyaguchi said on May 24. The announcement came in response to the controversy between the foundation and EigenLayer developers in the crypto community.
Two Ethereum researchers joined paid consultants at the EigenFoundation in the week before Miyaguchi's announcement. Justin Drake announced his appointment at the EigenFoundation on May 19 in a lengthy X post. He says he will receive incentives from the EigenFoundation worth “millions of dollars” but will reinvest the money into the Ethereum ecosystem. Dankrad Fest made a similarly lengthy announcement the following day. Fest admits to receiving “significant amounts of tokens”.
“I don't believe they will change my position or influence how the original protocol is developed, but I believe the community needs to know about it so they can hold me accountable.”
Both researchers stated that they wrote the posts personally and not as representatives of the Ethereum Foundation. Drake vowed to “continue to be critical of EigenLayer,” and Fest said he would “take opposing views.” Reaction to the researchers' move was mixed. ZkSecurity co-founder David Wong tweeted about Drake on X.
“This is some next level transparency. You have to love the EF people for their honesty, really. I don't know if we deserve these people.”
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Many commentators, however, expressed their doubts. “Really? He only revealed it because Coby released it,” one replied to Wong. Crypto trader Jordan Fish, also known as Coby, asked Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin about the foundation's staff's relationship with EigenLayer a day before Drake made his consulting position public. Another asked Fest: –
“You keep 20M for yourself but don't believe in the power of motivation? […] lol”
“Relying on culture and individual judgment is clearly not enough,” Miyaguchi wrote in her X post. [to preserve the foundation’s credible neutrality]We have been working on a formal policy to address this issue for some time. She promised more information soon.
Drake said he was the third member of the Ethereum Foundation to be affiliated with the EigenFoundation as an investor. He did not identify the person.
EigenLayer is an Ethereum layer-2 reset protocol that allows Ethereum node operators and validators to earn payments by re-storing liquid Ether (ETH) received in exchange for shares. They can put those assets on EVM platforms like Lido—perhaps using ETH received on that platform—or verify and secure other networks like sidechains or non-EVM blockchains. Therefore, you can share the same property twice.
EigenLayer was launched on the Ethereum Goerli testnet in April 2023 and partially launched on the mainnet in April.
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