The EIGEN token is now live for trading, transferring, and staking, boasting an impressive fully diluted valuation of $7.2 billion. This launch marks a significant milestone for EigenLayer, opening up new opportunities for investors and users in the crypto space.
The Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer has unlocked its native token, EIGEN, allowing for trading, transferring, and staking. The token debuted strongly at $4.32, corresponding to a fully diluted valuation of $7.2 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Notably, approximately 43% of trading volume occurred on the EIGEN/USDT pair on Binance, where the token was listed at 5:00 AM UTC on October 1.
The unlocking event enables developers to create Actively Validated Services (AVSs) using EIGEN staking, with plans to introduce programmatic incentives for participants. Aylo, the pseudonymous founder of Alpha Please, remarked on X that over 60 AVSs are currently being built on EigenLayer and suggested that the project could achieve a higher valuation than what the market is currently reflecting.
EigenLayer’s airdrop occurred in two phases: Season 1 distributed 113 million EIGEN tokens to restakers, while Season 2 allocated 86 million tokens primarily to node operators and stakers involved with the protocol. The protocol saw peak activity in June, reaching nearly $20 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), but this has since declined to around $12 billion. This drop can partly be attributed to stakers withdrawing funds after qualifying for the airdrop, along with significant outflows following a controversial report regarding its airdrop policy.
CoinDesk reported that Eigen Labs, the organization behind EigenLayer, shared a list of employees’ wallet addresses with ecosystem projects preparing to distribute tokens. In response to these claims, EigenLayer stated in a blog post that it had “no knowledge or evidence of any employee at Eigen Labs pressuring any team to unduly benefit.”
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