According to TechFlow, on August 15, Coindesk reported that the re-staking agreement EigenLayer caused controversy because employees received a large number of tokens in the ecosystem project airdrop. The total value of these tokens was close to US$5 million at the peak. Eigen Labs provided a list of employee wallet addresses to projects preparing to issue tokens, including Ether.Fi, Renzo, and AltLayer.
One project team said it sent each Eigen Labs employee a portion of the new cryptocurrency as a “thank you,” with each employee’s allocation ultimately valued at $80,000. Another team said Eigen Labs sent them a list of employee wallet addresses and that they felt pressured to pay out the tokens in order not to jeopardize their relationship with Eigen Labs, a company that is critical to their business.
In response to these concerns, Eigen Labs and the Eigen Foundation quietly banned employees from accepting such token airdrops in May, acknowledging that the practice could lead to conflicts of interest or at least give the impression of such, and implemented stricter internal policies.
