EigenLayer has successfully secured a $100 million investment from a16z crypto, a renowned cryptocurrency investment fund. This significant funding infusion was announced on the evening of February 22, making it the largest restaking project in the current cryptocurrency market.
EigenLayer disclosed that the decision to partner with a16z was driven by shared values and commitment to contributing to open-source projects, supporting initiatives that serve the long-term interests of the cryptocurrency community, and similar philosophies on development.
However, EigenLayer has not revealed specific details about how the $100 million will be utilized or the post-funding valuation of the project. Previously, in March 2023, EigenLayer successfully raised $50 million from prominent investors, including Blockchain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and others, with a valuation of $250 million.
EigenLayer is a protocol that enables the use of ETH and Ethereum's liquid staking tokens to participate in the validation of other blockchain networks, essentially restaking these tokens. The project initially supported tokens such as stETH from Lido, rETH from RocketPool, and cbETH from Coinbase, and later expanded to include sETH from Stakewise, mETH from Mantle, sfrxETH from Frax, ankrETH from Ankr, and wBETH from Binance.
Since lifting the restaking cap in early February 2024, EigenLayer's Total Value Locked (TVL) has surged from $2 billion to $7.9 billion at the time of this writing, securing its position among the top 5 DeFi projects with the highest TVL in the crypto industry.
EigenLayer's presence has given rise to a new category of liquid restaking tokens, with notable projects like ether.fi, Kelp DAO, Puffer Finance, among others. Users and projects engaged in liquid restaking are actively competing to accumulate reward points from EigenLayer, with the chance to receive airdrop tokens from the project.
In addition to restaking, EigenLayer is also developing EigenDA, a Data Availability solution for layer-2 solutions. Despite these developments, Sreeram Kannan, the founder of EigenLayer, stated in a Bloomberg interview that the project currently has no plans for token issuance.