EigenLayer reveals plan for token airdrop with 15% allocation to stakers

Reprise protocol EigenLayer is launching a native token in May and its distribution will include an airdrop for those betting on the platform.

According to a statement, the newly formed and independent non-profit organization Eigen Foundation will be the entity releasing the token.

The Eigen token will have a total supply of 1.67 billion tokens at launch. The foundation has allocated 45% of the tokens to its community. This is further broken down into stake drops (15%), community initiatives (15%) and ecosystem development (15%).

Additionally, 29.5% of the tokens have been allocated to investors, while early contributors will receive 25.5%. Investors and early contributors are subject to a total three-year lock-up period on their allocations. The first year involves a full lock-up, followed by a gradual release of their total holdings at a rate of 4% per month over the subsequent two years.

EigenLayer is a platform that allows users to deposit and redeploy ether from various liquid staking tokens, with the aim of allocating these funds to secure third-party networks or actively validated services. Since its launch last June, $16 billion worth of ether has been staked on it.

The project also brought a white paper today describes the structure of the Eigen token and how it will fit within the EigenLayer ecosystem.

The EigenLayer community airdrop

The community airdrop, which EigenLayer refers to as a stakedrop, will distribute 15% of the token supply to those who have staked using the platform. These tokens are distributed over several seasons.

In the first season, the foundation will distribute 5% of the token supply to users based on a snapshot of staking activity taken on March 15, 2024. Of this first season allocation, 90% of the tokens will be due on May 10 until eligible restarters — with a claim period of 120 days. The last 10% will be claimable in a second phase of the first season, which will take place a month later.

The distribution calculation is linear, based on the amount of ether staked and the duration of the stake, with other factors such as native withdrawals receiving an additional reward boost. Initially, as claims commence, the tokens will remain non-transferable to allow sufficient time for decentralization and to promote community consensus on the token’s utility and governance.

Nevertheless, when the Eigen token is launched, users can deploy it to secure the data availability layer called EigenDA. Other AVSs are likely to follow suit soon, the project said.

The remaining 10% of the offering distributed to the community is reserved for future seasons.

EigenLayer introduces ‘intersubjective forking’

In combination with the Eigen token, the project introduces a new crypto-economic security system known as intersubjective forkingwhich is intended to play a supplementary role in resuming ether.

This mechanism is designed to address intersubjective errors: malicious behavior that cannot be immediately detected on-chain, such as withholding data in oracles built on top of EigenLayer.

Intersubjective forking will be implemented separately from EigenLayer’s original plan to cut ETH restakers for on-chain behavior that is objectively identifiable. According to EigenLayer, this will eliminate the need to unnecessarily burden Ethereum validators.