EigenLayerās native token, EIGEN, cracked the top 100 tokens by market capitalization after commencing trading on Oct. 1, according to CoinMarketCap.
The token unlocked at 5:00 am UTC and has been trading between $3.50 and $4.50 per token on Binance.
According to Binance, it currently trades at around $3.85, implying a fully diluted value of approximately $6.5 billion.
Source: Binance
Its price aligns with the implied spot prices on derivatives exchanges and over-the-counter trading before the launch.
āEIGEN launched exactly in line with the pre-market price, sitting at $7B FDV,ā Aylo, the pseudonymous founder of Alpha Please, said in an Oct. 1 post on the X social media platform.
EigenLayerās EIGEN currently ranks 94th among tokens by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.
Thatās lower than Optimism (OP), Uniswap (UNI), and Filecoin (FIL) but more than Ethena (ENA).
ā6 months ago Iām not sure anyone would have said that $EIGEN would be valued less than those above coins,ā Aylo said, while adding:
āEigenLayer is the innovation on Ethereum this cycle, and has had more coverage than almost anything else in the EVM in the last year.ā
EigenLayerās total value locked. Source: DefiLlama
EigenLayer launched Eigen in a May airdrop but blocked the tokens from being transferred until October.
A person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph that informal over-the-counter trades purportedly rose from around $2 in August to roughly $3.50 as recently as Sept. 24. These comments are consistent with information from EigenLayerās community forums.
Tokenholders stand to benefit as more protocols start paying EigenLayerās retakers, who deposit tokens ā including EIGEN ā as collateral to secure other networks, or āactively validated servicesā (AVS), in EigenLayerās parlance.
According to DefiLlama, as of Sept. 30, EigenLayer commanded nearly $12 billion in total value locked (TVL).
In August, EigenDA, EigenLayerās affiliated AVS, started paying restakers in Ether (ETH) and EIGEN rewards. Other AVS, including Arpa Network, are following suit.
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