coindesk.com
Eigenlayer, the restaking protocol that has racked up $15.7 billion in deposits, released its token whitepaper Monday, confirming plans for an $EIGEN token.
According to a blog post written by the Eigen Foundation, the non-profit supporting the protocol, there will be a total supply of about 1.67 billion $EIGEN tokens, and 45% of those will go toward the EigenLayer community.
EMBED: https://twitter.com/eigenfoundation/status/1785000100315504776
The 45% is divided into three subgroups, with stakedrops, future community initiatives and ecosystem development each receiving buckets of 15%.
In the first season of the "stakedrop," as the team described the planned token release, Eigen Foundation will distribute 5% of the token supply to users based on their staking activities from March 15. The claim for these $EIGEN tokens opens on May 10, and will close after 120 days.
According to the foundation, investors will be allocated 29.5% of the token supply, and 25.5% will go towards early contributors. Both groups will have a three-year lock period, “with a full lock in year one, followed by a linear unlock of 4% of their total allocation each month over the next two years.”
In addition, at the launch of the $EIGEN token, users will be able to secure EigenDA, Eigenlayer’s Actively Validated Service (AVS) for data availability, with their $EIGEN tokens. Other AVSs are expected to follow, the foundation wrote.
EigenLayer is at the core of a new trend known as "restaking," where users’ ether ($ETH) tokens that are deposited or "staked" as security on the Ethereum blockchain can be repurposed to secure additional networks or protocols.
That restaked $ETH is used collectively to secure these auxiliary AVS networks on EigenLayer.
Read more: EigenLayer and EigenDA Launch on Ethereum Mainnet