In June 2023, a new kind of protocol was created on Ethereum: Eigenlayer. In practice, this introduced the concept of restaking, which aims to reuse ETH deposited in staking to secure other chains or protocols. From now on, the Fondation Eigenthe body responsible for developing the network, commits to the development of Ethereum via an astronomical donation.
The key points of this article:
In June 2023, Eigenlayer introduced the revolutionary concept of restaking on Ethereum.
The Eigen Foundation has made an extraordinary donation of $82 million in EIGEN tokens to Protocol Guild to support the development of Ethereum.
The Eigen Foundation donates 1% of the EIGEN token supply
Thursday, December 12, the Fondation Eigen announced his willingness to support the Protocol Guild initiative.
Thus, the body responsible for the development of EigenLayer announced a donation of 1% of the total supply of EIGEN tokens at Protocol Guild. At first glance, this figure may seem abstract. In total, the EIGEN token has a supply of 1.68 billion tokens. Therefore, 1% of this supply represents 16.8 million EIGEN tokens. At the current price of $4.88, this represents the modest sum of 82 million dollars. In practice, the Eigen Foundation justified its donation by a desire to directly support those who enable the development of Ethereum. The Eigen Foundation recognizes that without continued development of the Ethereum protocol, projects like EigenLayer simply would not have land on which to grow.
“At the Eigen Foundation, we share the belief that a decentralized future depends on a strong and well-supported infrastructure. By pledging 1% of EIGEN supply, we want to help the Protocol Guild support the core development of Ethereum and maintain its decentralized future. »
The Protocol Guild: significant support for Ethereum
But then, what is this famous Protocol Guild ? This is a collective fund for developers and researchers working on layer-1 of Ethereum. This collective has more than 180 members spread across 29 developer teams. These touch on all areas, from customer development and research to testing and coordination. Thus, we can summarize their goal as maintaining, improving and securing the Ethereum protocol. This initiative was born from an observation: financing open-source development is a real challenge, particularly in terms of economic compensation. Indeed, unlike applications and protocols which generate direct revenue, layer-1 developers do not have an economic model. Therefore, Protocol Guild will redistribute funds to key contributors to ensure they can continue their work, which is vital to the network and its users. With the donation from the Eigen Foundation, the Protocol Guild is strengthening its resources. This could translate into increased support for developers, but also an ability to attract new talent and conduct in-depth research on future developments.
“The future of Ethereum depends on strong collaboration within the ecosystem. With Beam Chain, based rollups, zk-proofs, decentralized storage, and more advancements for Ethereum on the horizon, we are proud to support the builders shaping this future through the Protocol Guild. »
Last June, the protocol LayerZero also supported Protocol Guild during the distribution of its airdrop. Thus, users had to complete a “Proof of Donation” to claim their tokens. Funds from this process, more than $18 million, were donated to the Protocol Guild initiative.