EigenLayer to Drop Token on May 10

EigenLayer, the much-hyped Ethereum restaking protocol with nearly $16 billion in total value locked (TVL), will launch its native EIGEN token on May 10.

The project has released the token’s whitepaper on GitHub and deployed a claim portal on its website. According to the airdrop terms, residents of the United States and Canada are not eligible to claim EIGEN. The Eigen Foundation says it has “implemented proxy and VPN detection and blocking controls” to prevent claims by residents of ‘Prohibited Jurisdictions.’

The EIGEN token will not be transferable at launch as the project looks to achieve certain milestones before making it tradeable, including increased decentralization of the token supply and community discussion.

EigenLayer is DeFi’s third-largest protocol by TVL after Lido and Aave, according to DeFiLlama. It enables users to re-stake their Ether or liquid staking tokens (LSTs) to earn additional yield by securing third-party applications called Actively Validated Services (AVS).

Of EIGEN’s 1.67 billion total supply, 45% has been allocated to community initiatives, while investors receive 29.5% and contributors get 25.5%, according to a report from The Block. The investor and team allocations will vest linearly over two years after a one-year cliff.

The Foundation has allocated 15% of the total EIGEN supply for airdrops, of which 5% will be claimable on May 10, with the remaining tokens used for future incentives. Notably, only direct restakers and users who participated through Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs), like EtherFi’s eETH and Renzo’s ezETH, are eligible for the first claim.

However, users of related DeFi protocols like Pendle and Equilibrium will have to wait until Season 2. “Determining the appropriate recipients of the stakedrop for certain LRT end users was either not possible or required subjective decisions due to those users’ interactions with certain DeFi protocols,” the website states.