What is EigenLayer?
EigenLayer is a novel protocol built on Ethereum that provides an open marketplace for Ethereum’s unmatched trust via a new primitive in crypto-economic security called restaking.
In particular, EigenLayer allows existing Ethereum validators to set their staking withdrawal credentials to the EigenLayer smart contracts and opt into securing other protocols that require their own distributed validation mechanisms, including rollups, sidechains, cross-chain bridges, oracles, and trusted execution environments, leveraging the same staked ETH as collateral. These protocols, which EigenLayer dubs Actively Validated Services (AVSs), can then impose additional slashing conditions on the validator’s restaked ETH or other ERC20 tokens.
This mechanism, called restaking, effectively allows AVSs to utilize Ethereum’s crypto-economic security as theirs without needing to issue their own tokens and construct clever incentive mechanisms to attract and grow their own proprietary, decentralized, and robust validator networks. In return, the validators earn additional revenue from providing security and validation services to their chosen AVSs.
See here a good explainer video about restaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r0SooSQFJg&ab_channel=Junion
Last updated
