Written by: EigenLayer
Compiled by Alex Liu, Foresight News
Since EigenLayer announced the EIGEN token, the community has accumulated many related questions. We selected the most frequently asked questions and answered them: 👇
What are intersubjectivity attributable faults?
These errors can be identified through broad consensus among external observers, determining their occurrence even outside the blockchain.
Unlike objectively traceable errors, consensus-traceable errors between entities may not be mathematically and cryptographically provable on-chain.
For example: Is the data in the data availability layer available at a specific point in time? This can be observed off-chain through data availability sampling, but the unavailability of data cannot be proven in a smart contract.
How does EIGEN staking complement ETH re-staking?
Many AVS (Active Verification Service) protocols ensure their security through an objective slashing mechanism; the liveness and censorship resistance of the service, which previously relied on the assumption that "staking is decentralized", can now be ensured by staking EIGEN.
Services that guarantee security through ETH re-staking and liveness through EIGEN staking can distribute fees between the two consensus groups, thereby optimizing resource allocation.
In the core Ethereum ecosystem services, security can be enhanced through dual staking of ETH and EIGEN. ETH re-staking can promote decentralization and resist collusion, guaranteeing the majority trust of Ethereum participants, while staking EIGEN ensures the security of the crypto economy through token forks.
EigenLayer enables AVS to integrate two modes:
Objective staking from ETH and consensus staking between entities from EIGEN.
Additionally, AVS can leverage its native token to enhance validation through the support of its consensus-building community of AVS token stakers.
How does EIGEN staking accelerate innovation in AVS with objectively traceable errors?
By leveraging the cryptoeconomic security of consensus slashing between entities using EIGEN tokens, staking EIGEN enables AVS to operate effectively even when writing on-chain fraud proofs is not feasible or would otherwise be unnecessarily complex. This approach increases security while reducing technical complexity.
How does EIGEN staking provide security throughout the lifecycle of the new objective AVS?
Staking EIGEN can provide critical security in the early stages, enabling MVP to be deployed faster. As the system matures and errors become easier to objectively identify, AVS can transition to using ETH for re-staking.
Which AVS can use the security provided by staking EIGEN tokens?
Anti-censorship: Ensure that propagated transactions are included in the ledger, and censorship detected outside the chain will result in penalties.
Ledger growth: Keep adding transactions continuously. Stopping execution is considered an off-chain failure resulting in slashing.
Data availability: Data is guaranteed to be accessible across the entire network, and off-chain fraud detection allows for penalties to be imposed on non-compliant providers.
Oracle: Provides reliable real-world data. Discrepancies detected off-chain will result in malicious nodes being punished.
Applications
These basic modules can be combined into more complex modules, which can then be used in various AVS. For example:
New Chain: Build new blockchain networks with customizable security and functionality.
Prediction Market: Develop decentralized prediction markets using consensus staking between entities to obtain reliable oracles.
AI system: Ensure the effectiveness and security of AI training, benchmarking, and reasoning through consensus staking between entities.
Intent and MEV: Manage transaction sequencing and prevent malicious MEV activity through an innovative order matching engine.
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Please note that while EIGEN is currently stakingable, the full functionality described above will be enabled once the tokens are transferable.
