EigenLayer plans to start out “slashing” restakers on April 17, ensuing within the Ethereum restaking protocol’s “first feature-complete iteration,” it mentioned in an April 2 announcement.
Implementing slashing will mark EigenLayer’s last step towards establishing the protocol as “infrastructure for a brand new era of verifiable apps and providers constructed on the Verifiable Cloud,” it mentioned in a post on the X platform.
In 2024, EigenLayer began distributing rewards — together with emissions of its native EIGEN token — to incentivize restakers. Nonetheless, slashing has up to now been restricted to EigenLayer’s testnets.
As soon as slashing is stay, node operators and restakers will be capable to voluntarily “opt-in,” leading to a gradual transition for customers, EigenLayer said in a weblog submit.
Slashing begins on EigenLayer’s mainnet quickly. Supply: EigenLayer
Associated: EigenLayer eyes consumer adoption post EIGEN unlock, founder says
Gradual roll-out
Launched in 2023, EigenLayer secures third-party protocols — dubbed actively validated providers (AVSs) — towards a pool of “restaked” cryptocurrencies used as collateral.
Restaking includes taking a token that has already been staked — posted as collateral with a validator in change for rewards — and utilizing it to safe different protocols concurrently.
Slashing is the first methodology for securing proof-of-stake protocols — together with Ethereum in addition to “restaking” protocols comparable to EigenLayer — and includes penalizing a community’s node operators for poor efficiency or misbehavior.
“If Operators don’t meet the situations set, the AVS might penalize them. However, if the Operator runs the service efficiently, AVSs can reward the Operator’s efficiency and incentivize particular exercise,” EigenLayer mentioned in an April 3 weblog submit.
This “permits for a free market the place Operators can earn rewards for his or her work and AVSs can launch verifiable providers,” the submit mentioned.
EigenLayer’s whole worth locked (TVL) over time. Supply: DeFILlama
Rising ecosystem
Upward of 30 AVSs are already stay on EigenLayer’s mainnet, and dozens extra are being developed.
They embody EigenDA — run by EigenLayer developer Eigen Labs — and ARPA Community, a protocol specializing in trustless randomization.
In October, EigenLayer unlocked its native token, EIGEN. It’s designed as a extra versatile possibility for securing consensus-based protocols than different proof-of-stake tokens, comparable to Ether, according to EigenLayer.
EigenLayer is prioritizing onboarding crypto-native apps in segments comparable to decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming earlier than increasing past Web3, founder Sreeram Kannan told Cointelegraph in October.
“We’re beginning with the inside-out method, specializing in high-throughput shopper apps like DeFi and gaming, however as soon as we develop slightly greater and have essential mass, we’ll go exterior and begin concentrating on broader shopper markets,” Kannan mentioned.
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