EigenLayer’s total value locked surpasses $10 billion

Quick Take

  • The surge in EigenLayer’s total value locked (TVL) is attributed to continuous ether deposits and the rise in ether’s price.
  • Assets deposited to EigenLayer have increased from $1.1 billion to $10 billion year-to-date.

The total value of assets deposited in EigenLayer has increased approximately tenfold from $1.1 billion year-to-date, reaching $10.4 billion at the time of writing — approximately 2.93 million ether. This positions EigenLayer as the third-largest DeFi protocol, following Lido and Aave.

Eigen’s TVL is slightly less than that of the lending protocol Aave, which is at $10.6 billion.

EigenLayer offers a protocol for users to deposit and “re-stake” ether from various liquid staking tokens, aiming to then allocate those funds to secure third-party networks.

Part of the reason for this surge is the continued ether deposits on Eigen (primarily via liquid restaking protocols) coupled with the increase in ether’s price. The protocol’s stage 1 launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023. Within the next eight months, the protocol’s TVL had surged to over $6 billion in February.

Currently, only the native restaking with EigenPod is open.

Securing other protocols

The protocol’s strategy involves leveraging ETH’s economic security by accepting native ETH—which can be directly restaked by Ethereum validators—and liquid staked ETH, or liquid staking protocols. This mechanism (called restaking) can then be used to secure other protocols, though this feature is yet to go live.

EigenLabs closed a $50 million Series A funding round in March 2023 led by Blockchain Capital. Last month, Andreessen Horowitz led the Series B round, investing $100 million in EigenLayer.


Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Vishal Chawla is The Block’s Crypto Ecosystems Editor and has spent over seven years covering tech protocols, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Vishal can be reached on Twitter at @vishal4c and via email at [email protected]

Editor

To contact the editor of this story:
Timmy Shen at
[email protected]