EigenLayer

Mission & Key Concepts

EigenLabs is building a protocol called EigenLayer that provides crypto-economic security as a service to decentralized applications such as rollups, bridges, and oracles. Typically these projects are designed to be secured by their own token. However, because it is difficult to bootstrap the value of a new token, this often leads to situations where projects lack sufficient capital to strongly secure their networks.

With EigenLayer, projects come to Ethereum for staked security in place of or in addition to their own token. Stakers in the Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) network opt in to “re-stake” their Ether to crypto-economically secure these projects. The projects and their users pay fees back to stakers in exchange for stronger security guarantees.

EigenLayer makes it possible for developers to build new decentralized applications that launch with high crypto-economic security, but without the need to bootstrap a large amount of value into their own token. This modularization of crypto-economic security unlocks new possibilities for open and permissionless innovation.

Current Challenges & Solutions

• Challenge: Anyone building a new decentralized service for Ethereum must bootstrap a new trust network to secure their system, fragmenting security.
• Solution: EigenLayer solves this problem by enabling any service, regardless of its composition (e.g. EVM-compatibility), to tap into the pooled security of Ethereum's stakers, creating an environment for permissionless innovation and free-market governance.
• Challenge: The current blockchain landscape often requires each service to be fortified by its distinct token, which can present significant challenges due to the complications of bootstrapping new tokens, often resulting in inadequate capital for securing these services.
• Solution: EigenLayer offers an innovative solution by allowing blockchain services to harness the security infrastructure of Ethereum, thereby eliminating the need to rely solely on their individual token values. This unique setup allows stakeholders in the Ethereum PoS network to 're-stake' their assets with EigenLayer to fortify other services while potentially garnering enhanced returns.

This robust security guarantee is offered to customers in exchange for transaction fees, thereby eliminating the necessity for substantial initial capital investments. This paves the way for the development of pioneering blockchain modules, making blockchain innovation more accessible and affordable.

EigenLayer's main concepts

EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking, a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security. This primitive enables the reuse of ETH on the consensus layer. Users that stake ETH natively or with a liquid staking token (LST) can opt-in to EigenLayer smart contracts to restake their ETH or LST and extend cryptoeconomic security to additional applications on the network to earn additional rewards.

With EigenLayer, Ethereum stakers can help secure many services by restaking their staked ETH and opting-in to many services simultaneously, providing pooled security. Reusing ETH to provide security across many services reduces capital costs for a staker to participate and significantly increases the trust guarantees to individual services.

History & Achievements

Founded: 2021

HQ: Seattle, Washington, USA

Our founder, Sreeram Kannan, was a professor at the University of Washington, and the Head of the UW Blockchain Lab. The first members of our team came out of that lab.

Funding & Backers

EigenLayer has raised a total of $64.4M

Main investors:

• Blockchain Capital
• Electric Capital
• Polychain Capital
• Coinbase Ventures
• Hack VC
• Bixin Ventures
• Ethereal Ventures
• Figment
• dao5
• Finality Capital
• Robot Ventures
• ...and many more!

Core Team

• Sreeram Kannan, CEO & Founder
• Liz Vortman, Recruiting Director
• Chris Dury, COO
• Calvin Liu, CSO
• Sid Sanyal, VP of Engineering
• Brianna Montgomery, Strategy Lead

(view the entire team here)

Culture

We’re a remote-friendly team based mostly out of Seattle, Washington.

We love to learn, debate, and experiment, and are inspired by interesting ideas - especially in math and cryptography. Our team is growing, and we are always open to meeting individuals aligned with our mission.