1/ $EIGEN is not in the top 100 in terms of market cap.

For comparison, Chainlink's $LINK is 11 times larger, and $TAO is 7 times larger.

Even $TIA is twice as large as $EIGEN. Why is that?

2/ Even more surprising is that Eigenlayer has become the third largest protocol with a locked value (TVL) of $10 billion, almost on par with AAVE's $11 billion.

But AAVE's market cap is 3.7 times that of $EIGEN.

In terms of TVL, AAVE's price is actually only half of $EIGEN's.

3/ $EIGEN has received at least 2 times more attention on the X platform than all the tokens mentioned above in the past 6 months, and its trading price is still very low.

4/ The reason is a bit complicated.

Many people told me that they don’t really understand what Eigenlayer is doing, and think its token economics are too complicated and not as straightforward as Aave.

5/ Not only because of the complexity, the same group of people also think $EIGEN is bad because it is a “VC-funded, low circulation, high FDV token”.

However, many similar tokens have much higher market caps than $EIGEN: like $WLD, $SUI, $APT, $JUP ($JUP is twice the market cap of $EIGEN!), $ALEO, and $TIA....

6/ The recent “unsanctioned sell-off” also hit its security image.

But I think the bigger problem is that $EIGEN lacks a speculative story.

Although many people don’t understand $TAO or $TIA, there are speculative communities behind these tokens.

7/ $TAO took advantage of the popularity of the AI ​​concept.

In contrast, the initial enthusiasm for re-staking has subsided, and Eigen has not been able to take full advantage of that wave. Coupled with the rise of two major competitors, it is in an even more awkward situation.

At the same time, $TIA has maintained a high market value by attracting users through "staking TIA to get ecological airdrops".

8/ $EIGEN can refer to $TIA's approach and issue airdrops of the ecological AVS protocol to pledgers, with even greater force.

I mean "great force" seriously - many people have lost confidence in "staking for airdrops", so it's time to overturn this view.

9/ But there is a big problem here:

Insiders control 77% of $EIGEN's stake, diluting community rewards.

The staked and locked tokens make people more resistant to VC tokens.