Bankless: Why EigenLayer is a billion-dollar airdrop opportunity

Author: Jack Inabinet, Bankless; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Only a few crypto projects have created at least a billion dollars in wealth for early users in the initial stages of airdrops, but we are likely to see To another hot protocol joining the list soon...

Restaking promises to be a revolutionary cryptoeconomic primitive, and EigenLayer is at the forefront of working to make it a reality!

Today we will discuss why EigenLayer is a game-changing project, give examples of the types of services that can be built on top of it, and show you why EigenLayer is the next billion dollar airdrop Reasons for the opportunity and an estimate of how big an airdrop you can get by participating in the EigenLayer opportunity.

Answer all your questions about EigenLayer airdrop.

Why is EigenLayer a game changer?

EigenLayer creates a decentralized marketplace that allows Ethereum (ETH) holders to “re-stake” their tokens, providing security for other crypto applications beyond the Ethereum network.

As a network of programmable trust, EigenLayer allows developers to create decentralized networks while avoiding the difficulties involved in launching and operating their own trust networks.

Since protocol developers no longer need to worry about running a validator network, they can focus more on important matters such as building their applications rather than supporting their decentralized network. Use the market cap of the staked tokens for additional effort.

This lowers the barrier to entry for creating your own decentralized network, giving more power to the long tail of cryptographic security applications!

Protocols using EigenLayer are "renting" Ethereum's economic security from existing stakers. This reuse of ETH provides security for multiple applications, enabling capital efficiency for staking, effectively Reduces the cost of securing additional networks while providing strong trust guarantees for individual services.

For EigenLayer re-stakeholders, the protocol provides two ways to increase returns! Re-stakeholders not only earn enhanced returns by securing other networks, they are also eligible to receive airdrops from protocols that leverage their services.

What services can be built on EigenLayer?

EigenLayer's Active Validation Service (AVS) is any system that requires its own distributed network of validators for verification and relies on EigenLayer for security. The term “AVS” is actually an umbrella term that can be applied to the wide range of decentralized verification applications that the protocol can serve.

Restakers delegate their staked tokens to AVS operators, which operate EigenLayer’s infrastructure and use the restakers’ ETH as collateral for their services to provide In return, in exchange for the ability to use these staked Ether as collateral.

One of the most well-known AVS is EigenLayer’s data availability solution EigenDA.

While EigenDA is not yet launched, it is expected to significantly reduce rollups' data publishing costs and is expected to provide more attractive cost-effectiveness than leading data availability solution Celestia, thanks to The capital efficiency of re-staking relative to the costs involved in operating a standalone L1 blockchain in the Celestia model.

However, EigenLayer’s ability to ensure network security extends far beyond the Ethereum ecosystem, and exciting applications are emerging in the Cosmos ecosystem.

The Cosmos Hub (ATOM) has long been the primary cross-chain security provider for networks that don’t want to launch their own tokens and validator sets in the Cosmos ecosystem, but EigenLayer hopes to take that crown soon.

Ethos and Lay3r are two AVS that will enable the Cosmos Chain to bootstrap its L1 using EigenLayer’s existing trust network, providing a more attractive (and more cost-effective) secure alternative to Cosmos Hub plan.

Just as EigenLayer’s AVS can be used to provide security for L1 and L2 blockchains, they can verify a variety of other cryptographic systems, including decentralized guardian and oracle networks.

EigenLayer also aims to improve interoperability: their fast finality AVS will allow any trade to benefit from instant settlement, and bridge protocols can take advantage of AVS, facilitated by leveraging EigenLayer's re-staking ETH network as collateral Settlement, thereby reducing wait times when user transactions are transmitted!

While the intersection of artificial intelligence and cryptography is just beginning to be explored, EigenLayer could be the major player in unifying the two environments. On-chain artificial intelligence interfaces may soon be able to leverage AVS to verify the integrity of their algorithms by generating zero-knowledge proofs, and the capital efficiency of the EigenLayer re-staking model makes it more cost-effective than alternative zero-knowledge multi-party computation technologies.

3. How big is the EigenLayer airdrop?

Determining an accurate valuation for a crypto protocol with actual cash flow is difficult enough, let alone one that doesn’t yet exist! While there is no direct comparable to EigenLayer, Celestia provides a neck-and-neck competitor on which to base a valuation.

Celestia’s only use case may be as a data availability layer, but the network’s TIA token currently has a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $15 billion, down slightly from the $20 billion it tentatively reached last week peak.

EigenLayer's advantage over Celestia is the variety of additional services it offers; multiple revenue drivers beyond data availability mean the market may view EigenLayer as a better solution than Celestia Attractive investment opportunity.

Unfortunately, EigenLayer’s valuation is affected by the fact that it is not a blockchain network, which means that EIGEN tokens cannot expect to accumulate L1 premium.

In practical terms, this means that EIGEN will have less utility than TIA because it will not be the asset that collateralizes AVS. This factor will reduce the demand for the token relative to TIA and may cause EigenLayer to trade at a lower Valuation transactions.

EigenLayer may choose to enhance its utility by using EIGEN as a payment token for services provided by the network; however, this is a less efficient source of demand and will be operated by restakers and AVS This is partially offset by the inevitable selling pressure on traders, who receive it as compensation and seek to cash out and convert into other assets.

Taking all of these factors into account, it is reasonable to assume that EigenLayer will trade at a similar FDV to Celestia, and its initial valuation may be in the range of $10 billion to $20 billion.

While EigenLayer’s token economics are currently unclear, it doesn’t seem impossible to further assume that they will airdrop 10% of their token supply to early users, which would make the The protocol easily becomes a billion dollar airdrop!

What does this mean for depositors?

Currently, the amount of ETH deposited in EigenLayer is 760,000, and the upcoming increase in the LST limit will increase the amount of Ethereum stored. Depositors will receive one point per hour for every 1 ETH they stake, with a total of approximately 1 billion points accumulated.

It is currently impossible to know how many EigenLayer points will exist, as it is unclear when the airdrop will take place and how many points ETH will earn at that time, but we do know thatPolymarket currently believes that the EigenLayer airdrop will occur in four The chance of arriving before the month is 13%.

Assuming that the EIGEN airdrop will take at least 180 days from the next increase in the deposit limit, and the amount of ETH managed increases linearly to 1 million during this period, then at the time of the airdrop there will be approximately 4.8 billion points.

With valuations ranging from $10 billion to $20 billion, depositors can expect to earn $0.21 to $0.41 per point, assuming 10% of the total EIGEN supply is airdropped, said EigenLayer ETH deposited when the LST limit is raised again on February 5 can earn claims ranging from $907 to $1,814.

It is important to note that while this estimate needs to satisfy a number of assumptions, this is only the minimum allocation that non-whale depositors can expect to receive; the implementation of the allocation tiers for EIGEN tokens, as well as the cap on the maximum allocation, Will benefit small depositors!

How to maximize EigenLayer airdrop opportunities?

The first thing you need to do to qualify for the EigenLayer short trade is mark your calendar as a reminder to deposit ETH on February 5th!