EigenLayer announced the second airdrop

The Eigen Foundation, which is behind the EigenLayer restaking project, has announced the distribution of 86 million EIGEN tokens (~5.15% of the total supply) as part of the second season of the Stakedrop airdrop campaign.

1/ We’re excited to announce the EIGEN Season 2 Stakedrop in preparation for unlock!

Season 2 will recognize key contributors and participants across the eco:

☑️ Stakers & Operators ☑️ Eco Partners ☑️ Community

Claims go live on or before September 17, 2024.

More... pic.twitter.com/sC2t3fPy8I

— Eigen Foundation (@eigenfoundation) September 4, 2024

Tokens will be distributed among participants of three categories:

• stakers and node owners - ~70 million EIGEN, distribution is proportional to the stakeholder's share of ETH hours;
• ecosystem partners - up to 10 million EIGEN;
• community members — ~6 million EIGEN, to receive it, you need to link wallet addresses to social networks by September 11.

On August 15 at 22:26:59 UTC (August 16 at 01:26:59 Moscow/Kiev time), a snapshot was taken. Token distribution will begin on 'September 17 or before this date'.

Table of token distribution among stakers and node operators. Data: Eigen Foundation. When transitioning to the claiming page using VPN, the website prompts to disable it. Access may also be restricted from certain regions.

Data: Eigen Foundation's label page. The total issuance of EIGEN is 1.67 billion. The price of one token in pre-market is $2.77, which values FDV EigenLayer at ~$4.6 billion.

Pre-market of token EIGEN. Data: Hyperliquid. At a price of $2.77, the cost of the airdrop in the second season is approximately ~$238 million.

EigenLayer ranks second among the largest DeFi projects by TVL, trailing behind the liquid staking protocol Lido

Top-10 projects by TVL. Data: Defi Llama. At the peak in June 2024, the total volume of locked value of EigenLayer was $20 billion, since then it has decreased to $11,357 billion

In April, the project announced the launch of EIGEN and the distribution of 5% of the tokens as part of the first Stakedrop season. At that time, market participants reacted negatively to the information about the long vesting period and regional restrictions. The main complaint is related to the token holding period - after claiming EIGEN, it was not possible to move them, and the monthly unlock was only 5%.

Questions were also raised about the project's regional policy. The platform team decided not to allow users from the USA, Canada, Russia, China, and several other countries to participate, and also warned about blocking for using VPN services.

Update EigenLayer

Eigen Labs has announced an update to EigenPod, which makes the restaking protocol 'easier and more profitable'.

The upgrade integrates a new validator balance verification and management system for Ethereum and EigenPod. All personalized contracts are automatically updated.

Thanks to the innovation, EigenPod owners can:

• Requesting rewards in bulk significantly reduces gas costs;
• receive more profits thanks to restaking the earned rewards;
• use an enhanced user interface.

Recall that in May, it was reported that the co-founders of the DeFi platform Lido were secretly financing EigenLayer.

Read about the purpose of Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT) in the cards: