EigenLayer hits nearly $6 billion TVL as its uncapped deposits window draws to a close

Resume protocol EigenLayer has seen its TVL rise to almost $6 billion in recent days after the temporary lifting of its deposit limits.

Assets deposited at EigenLayer have increased by approximately 170%, according to DeFiLlama, from $2.15 billion when the period began on February 5 to $5.9 billion at the time of writing – approximately 2.3 million ether. facts.

To put that in perspective, the TVL is equal to about 2% of the total circulating supply of airwaves, according to The Block’s pricing page. It also places EigenLayer under the TVL’s top five DeFi protocolsahead of leading decentralized exchange Uniswap and behind only Lido, Maker, Aave and JustLend.

EigenLayer underwent a series of deposit limit increases before the final limit of 200,000 ether ($500 million) for each liquid staking token was temporarily lifted. The removal of EigenLayer’s TVL caps ends today at 3:00 PM ET. However, the project said it eventually plans to permanently lift the limits, enabling a “permissionless, neutral environment while promoting decentralization.”

EigenLayer previously said the temporary removal of the caps was intended to stimulate organic demand. However, many users have been incentivized to deposit funds and join the network to earn reward points – with stakers speculating that they may be able to receive Eigen token airdrop rewards in the future.

What is EigenLayer?

EigenLayer’s protocol allows users to deposit and redeploy ether via liquid staking tokens, allocating these funds to secure third-party networks and potentially earning additional rewards. Liquid staking solutions allow users to participate Ethereum ETH

+2.32%
staking while unlocking the value of the underlying asset as a liquid staking token for use as collateral in DeFi.

The first phase of Eigenayer’s protocol was rolled out on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023, allowing users to deposit LSTs from three staking projects: Lido, Rocket Pool, and Coinbase. The protocol has been in place ever since extensive to additional LSTs, including Stakewise’s sETH, Mantle’s mETH, Frax’s sfrxETH, Ankr’s ankrETH, and Binance’s wBETH.

EigenLabs – the team behind EigenLayer – closed a $50 million Series A funding round led by Blockchain Capital in March 2023. Last month, EigenLayer announced plans to adopt a shared security model – allowing protocols to join the network using a collective pool of re-deployed ether. The project aims to become a large decentralized application platform and enable the launch of other projects, using the so-called shared security model.

Yesterday, the percentage of ether supply deployed on the Ethereum network reached 25% for the first time.

The Block contacted EigenLayer for comment.