Why EigenLayer Gave Away More Tokens After Widespread Criticism of Its Stakedrop

Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer, and the Eigen Foundation’s Robert Drost explain everything about the recently announced EIGEN token and how they are responding to critics who say the stakedrop favored whales.

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EigenLayer has been in the news this week after it announced its ‘stakedrop,’ where it will distribute EIGEN tokens to early users of the restaking platform.

Sreeram Kannan, founder and CEO of EigenLayer, and Robert Drost, CEO and executive director of the Eigen Foundation, discuss the launch of the token, a “universal intersubjective work token” and how it allows for slashing, or penalizing, for externally observable faults, such as data unavailability. The Eigen Foundation, a non-profit entity based in the Cayman Islands, was also recently established to grow the protocol and assist in creating a decentralized community.

They also address criticisms of the token's launch, including geoblocking and the initial non-transferability of stakedrops for the community, and explain why they decided to allocate an additional 100 EIGEN tokens for all participants in the stakedrop. Plus, they reveal a target date by which a decision about the token unlock date should be made.

Show highlights:

The buzz around the universal intersubjective work token and what it was created for
What constitutes the digital commons and its two primary characteristics
How the EIGEN token is designed to prevent the necessity of forking an entire blockchain
Whether dapps should evolve into AVSes and EigenLayer’s complementary role to Ethereum, not replace it
Why the Eigen Foundation was established and how it differs from Eigen Labs
Robert's response to the criticism regarding the exclusion of certain countries
Why EIGEN will be distributed linearly, despite it potentially favoring whales
EigenLayer's announcement of an updated stakedrop, after listening to community feedback
The critique of the vesting schedule and Robert's explanation of when the lock period starts
Why Sreeram believes that transfer restrictions are beneficial and empowering for users
What the next steps are for EigenLayer

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Guests |

Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer

Previous appearance on Unchained:

Why EigenLayer May Be the Most Innovative New Ecosystem Since Ethereum

Do You Need to Think Twice Before Restaking Your Assets?

Robert Drost, CEO and executive director of the Eigen Foundation

Links |

Airdrop:

Introducing the Eigen Foundation, EIGEN token and Season 1 Stakedrop

Robert Drost’s threadon the Eigen Foundation
Viktor Bunin’s thread on the token
Unchained:
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Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.

HOST

Laura Shin

Laura Shin is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (Public Affairs, 2022). Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and videos have had more than 15 million downloads and views. Shin has spoken about cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She lives in New York City.