EigenLayer announces second "airdrop"

EigenLayer has announced its second "stakedrop", distributing 86 million EIGEN tokens, 5% of its total supply of 1.67 billion, to stakers, node operators, AVS, and community members.

Eligibility: 

Participants who were active between March 15 and August 15 are eligible to receive tokens starting on or before September 17.

Stakers and node operators: 70 million tokens will be distributed to stakers and active operators based on their proportion of ETH.

Other participants: 10 million tokens are distributed to AVS and other contributors, while 6 million tokens will be distributed to community members, including open source contributors, who must verify their identity by September 11.

My Take:

EigenLayer’s second staking airdrop comes at a critical time for the protocol, as its TVL has fallen from 5.4M ETH to 4.8M ETH since June. This decline reflects trends in the restaking space and may be driven by the end of initial token distribution events. However, this new wave of token distributions, coupled with the deployment of universal token staking and integration with Ethena, may reignite interest, potentially helping EigenLayer regain some lost momentum. Additionally, restaking competitor Symbiotic recently grew its TVL to $1.5B since launching in early July, suggesting that protocols that have yet to launch tokens may be better positioned to preserve capital in this environment. $BTC $ETH