A serious token sale violation occurred at EigenLayer, which involved the early sale of EIGEN tokens worth approximately $5.5 million, although these tokens were originally in the lock-up period. The incident sparked widespread concern in the community because the wallets in question may be related to EigenLayer employees, former employees, or early investors. On October 5, the EigenLayer team stated that it had launched an investigation and revealed that the problem stemmed from an investor's email being hacked, resulting in approximately 1.67 million EIGEN tokens being stolen and sold on the market.
EigenLayer’s lock-up rules are supposed to strictly protect the tokens of early investors and employees from early sales. The lock-up period will not be gradually unlocked until September 30, 2025. This incident clearly violated this rule. Although EigenLayer has taken measures to cooperate with the platform and law enforcement authorities to recover some of the stolen funds, this violation still caused a big blow to EigenLayer's reputation.
EigenLayer plays a vital role in the Ethereum ecosystem and is particularly known for its “re-staking” model, which supports the security of decentralized applications by leveraging staked ETH. However, this token sale incident has undoubtedly had a negative impact on the project, especially on the market's confidence in its security and governance structure. In the future, it remains to be seen whether EigenLayer can use further improvements in technology and governance to restore the trust of the community and promote the long-term development of the re-staking ecosystem.
