Continuing the journey of a new day in the crypto world with a new update from the Ethereum ecosystem, today we have a new protocol which has been working to allow the Ethereum validators and stakers to “re-stake” their ETH assets onto the various emerging networks which has just been launched on a testnet.
We are excited to announce the release of the testnet for the first stage of the EigenLayer protocol, which supports liquid and native restaking.
Please read the full details here: https://t.co/1eoriZOcwo
1/8 pic.twitter.com/xLs3CC2EOK
— EigenLayer (@eigenlayer) April 6, 2023
The EigenLayer protocol’s mainnet launch is expected to come by in the Q3 2023, however, the testing of the protocol will be phased out in three stages in order to onboard different participants onto the EigenLayer ecosystem. The first stage of this procedure will be EigenLayer using the Goerli testing network of Ethereum.
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The protocol has a heavy backing from their Series A funding round which took place back in March. The funding round was led by crypto venture firm Blockchain Capital, along with Polychain Capital, Electric Capital Coinbase Ventures, and Finality Capital Partner. The project ha announced $50 million as their raised sum.
The aim of the EigenLayer is to become a decentralized marketplace for Ethereum node operators and validators. They are looking forward to help them in earning fees on additional services. The protocol will allow them to re-stake their assets that they had received in exchange for staking their Ether on various platforms such as Lido (stETH) and RocketPool (rETH). These assets will be able to be reused by them in order to validate and secure other networks, for example; sidechains or non-EVM blockchains.
As per the whitepaper of the EigenLayer, the protocol has also been planning to enable re-staking for the ETH withdrawn from the Beacon Chain after the Shapella upgrade is completed. It stated, “Ethereum validators can set their beacon chain withdrawal credentials to the EigenLayer smart contracts, and opt-in to new modules built on EigenLayer.”
The EigenLayer protocol is aiming to address the issues that has been prevailing with the validator economic incentives. Sreeram Kannan, the founder of EigenLayer, said that by facilitating the moving and re-staking of the staked ETH to other networks will help incentivize validators and stakers with some additional yields along with allowing secure growth path for smaller networks.
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Joseph Lubin, the cofounder of Ethereum, had previously said, “Eigenlayer is a new paradigm for fostering protocol-centric innovation through a programmatic, decentralized trust marketplace.”
The Eigen Labs team is at the forefront of some of the most exciting work happening in Ethereum. @etherealvc is proud to have supported @sreeramkannan and the @eigenlayer team since inception. https://t.co/WP6qu5rW5z
— Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) March 29, 2023
According to the date from Ultrasound.Money, there are about 17.9 million ETH that are currently staked on the Beacon Chain.
Source: Cointelegraph
