Project Positioning
EigenLayer is a protocol built on top of Ethereum that introduces the concept of re-staking, a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security. This primitive allows for re-staking of ETH on the consensus layer. Users who stake ETH can opt-in to the EigenLayer smart contract to re-stake their ETH and extend cryptoeconomic security to other applications on the network.
Ecological Projects
The most important sub-track derived from the EigenLayer meta-protocol is the Liquidity Restaking DeFi (LRD) service.
Users entrust LSD (staking certificate) assets such as stETH to the liquidity re-staking protocol. The protocol deposits LSD into EigenLayer for re-staking on behalf of the user and obtains re-staking certificate tokens, namely LRT (Liquid Restaking Token) assets.
In order to control risks, EigenLayer has a short window for users to re-stake. In other words, most of the time, users cannot deposit directly into EigenLayer. Therefore, the Liquid Native Restaking protocol has emerged. Users can deposit any amount at any time and obtain re-staking certificates and liquidity, which has attracted a large number of users and funds.
There are currently 4 main head products:
1.Ether.Fi
Ether.Fi ranks first in terms of lock-up amount and has several significant advantages:
First, convert ETH to eETH and deposit it into EigenLayer immediately without waiting for EigenLayer's deposit window;
Second, it provides an unstake exit mechanism, that is, eETH can be unstaked and converted to ETH;
Third, by cooperating with the Pendle protocol, eETH can be deposited into Pendle for liquidity mining, which can significantly provide income;
Fourth, the first liquidity re-pledge project to issue tokens has benchmark value;
2.Renzo：
Rapidly deploy multiple chains and support the transfer of ezETH to emerging public chains such as Blast and Mode. Not only can you obtain re-staking income, but you can also interact with multiple new public chains to win airdrops, achieving the goal of killing two birds with one stone.
3.Puffer Finance：
It has received investment from Binance and has a luxurious financing background. Its re-staking function reduces the threshold for node operators to below 1 ETH, trying to attract small nodes to join;
4. KelpDAO:
KelpDAO is a Restaking ecosystem project under Stader Lab. Stader Lab has been operating for many years and has a good reputation, so its security is guaranteed to a certain extent.
In addition to the liquidity re-staking track derived from re-staking, there are currently various AVS and Operator projects built on the EigenLayer protocol, such as the self-operated EigenDA and the modular track AltLayer.
These projects verify the feasibility and sustainability of EigenLayer and are therefore equally worthy of attention.
Project Benefits
EigenLayer provides various benefits to restakers, such as securing innovative projects, promoting rapid innovation across the entire blockchain stack, and fostering Ethereum’s ecosystem growth. By restaking ETH on EigenLayer, stakers will help support groundbreaking projects built in the Ethereum ecosystem and access staking opportunities that were previously unavailable to them.
As the Ethereum ecosystem continues to grow, staying abreast of the latest developments and assessing their impact on staking operations is critical to maximizing opportunities and mitigating risks. EigenLayer does not rely on Ethereum’s social consensus. EigenLayer’s goal is responsible decentralization. Rather than offloading unnecessary slashing risk onto Ethereum or external protocols, EigenLayer includes a slashing veto committee. This internalizes social consensus and prevents slashing risk.
Market heat
Popularity: Eigenlayer’s Twitter has nearly 270,000 followers, and the Discord community has 190,000 followers, of which 20,000 are active online. As an infrastructure platform protocol, the popularity and community users of social networking sites exceed those of PEPE in the MEME track, which shows that both institutions and retail investors have very high expectations for the project.
According to Foresight News, according to DefiLlama data, EigenLayer TVL has reached 10.4 billion US dollars, surpassing Aave to become the second largest DeFi protocol in terms of TVL. The largest TVL protocol is Lido (35 billion US dollars).
