EigenLayer: Exploring a New Era of Ethereum Re-staking and Active Validation Services

EigenLayer is an innovative technological protocol operating on the Ethereum network that introduces the concept of re-staking. As of June 5, 2024, the protocol has attracted over 5.309 million ETH for re-staking.

ETH holders and holders of related liquidity assets (LST) can re-stake their assets on EigenLayer to earn additional rewards. At the same time, this mechanism also provides convenience for developers, allowing them to utilize Ethereum's existing validator set and staked ETH to launch new Active Validator Services (AVS). This greatly reduces the complexity of building new protocols on Ethereum, eliminating the need to build security infrastructure from scratch and launch a PoS network.

The founder of EigenLayer likened it to "a verifiable cloud in the crypto space." This description vividly summarizes the core value of EigenLayer's "cloud security verification" protocol brought to the Web3 ecosystem.

Introduction to Active Verification Service (AVS)

Active Verification Service (AVS) refers to systems that require self-owned distributed verification semantics for validation, covering multiple areas such as sidechains, data availability layers, virtual machines, Web3 Keeper networks, bridges, threshold encryption schemes, and trusted execution environments. Each AVS is equipped with a dedicated set of smart contracts.

Active Verification Service Projects in the EigenLayer Ecosystem

On April 9, 2024, EigenLayer launched the operator and AVS modules on the mainnet. As of June 5, 2024, EigenLayer officially announced 13 live AVS projects and 8 new AVS projects based on Rollup. These projects cover several key areas:

1. EigenDA: The first AVS project developed by EigenLabs has launched on the mainnet in the second quarter of 2024.

2. Aethos: A decentralized strategy engine that supports custom trading rules.

3. AltLayer: A decentralized Rollup protocol that utilizes EigenDA to achieve data availability.

4. Blockless: An infrastructure platform for launching, integrating, and protecting network-neutral applications.

5. Drosera Network: A protocol for creating automated monitoring systems for decentralized applications.

6. Espresso: A shared ordering tool that connects Layer2, designed to enhance the interoperability of Rollups.

7. Ethos: A secure coordination layer for Cosmos that provides economic security support based on staking ETH.

8. Hyperlane: The first open-permission, shared-use interoperability layer designed for the construction of modular blockchain stacks.

9. Lagrange: A decentralized prover network that launched the ZK Coprocessor and State Committees based on zero-knowledge proofs.

10. Near: A blockchain with features like account abstraction, supporting interoperability with other chains.

11. Omni: An interoperability protocol based on Ethereum, used to establish low-latency communication between Rollups on Ethereum.

12. Silence Laboratories: Focused on building a verification library and software toolkit based on Multi-Party Computation (MPC-TSS).

13. Witness Chain: Converts the physical attributes of the DePIN network into verifiable digital proofs for building new products and services.

Restaked Rollup: EigenLayer's new active validation service

Restaked Rollup is an innovative category of active validation services from EigenLayer, which integrates multiple services into a single Rollup service. Users can not only earn restaking rewards from it but also utilize multiple service functions at the same time. Currently, several projects have joined this new service category, including AltLayer, Caldera, Celo, Cyber, LayerN, Mantle, Movement, Polymer Labs, and Versatus.

These projects each have their own characteristics, such as Caldera providing a platform for the rapid deployment of high-performance Rollups, Celo offering a technical framework for decentralized application development, Cyber focusing on becoming the social layer for web3 applications, LayerN dedicated to creating a high-performance virtual machine execution environment, and Versatus being the world's first stateless Rollup.

Through these diverse projects, EigenLayer is injecting new vitality into the Ethereum ecosystem, driving blockchain technology toward greater efficiency, security, and interoperability.