EigenLayer’s EIGEN Token Set to Unlock for Trading on October 1
The crypto community is anticipating the unlocking of the native token EIGEN, by EigenLayer. According to the trading data from Aevo and Hyperliquid decentralized perpetual exchanges, EIGEN-linked perpetual futures are pointing at a spot price of about $4 per token, though nontransferable since May's launch.
The unlock, set to happen on October 1 at 5:00 am UTC, will see EIGEN start trading on leading centralized exchanges such as Binance and Bitfinex.
With a total supply of 1.67 billion tokens and approximately 200 million currently in circulation, EIGEN's fully diluted value could reach above $6.7 billion at the current price.
That optimism carries across both perpetual futures markets and informal over-the-counter trades. EIGEN perps have almost doubled since early September, up from about $2 a token. OTC trades reportedly increased from $2 in August to roughly $3.50 by the end of September, though trades in the immediate aftermath of the airdrop valued the token as high as $10.
This makes EigenLayer one of the largest applications within the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, according to DefiLlama’s estimate of close to $12 billion in total value locked.
The exact mechanism behind its growth is called "restaking," in which users deposit tokens as collateral to secure other networks referred to as "actively validated services" or AVS. In August, one such AVS called EigenDA started paying out restakers in both Ether and EIGEN tokens.
