This article will take readers to understand why top VC a16z invests in EigenLayer. According to a16z, EigenLayer is a decentralized and market-oriented mechanism for expanding the capabilities of the Ethereum ecosystem. This article is sourced from a16z’s article “Investing in EigenLayer,” compiled, translated, and written by DeepChain.
(Background: a16z invests 100 million pounds in EigenLayer! TVL ranks fourth, closely following AAVE, and Ethereum’s re-staking protocol is hot.)
(Further background: How many new airdrops and earnings can be unlocked by Ethereum’s re-staking protocol EigenLayer?)
Few people possess both foresight and the ability to bring about potential transformations. EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan is not only talented and incredibly intelligent, but fundamentally, his future vision is clear and captivating to the point where this vision becomes instantly real when conversing with him. Sreeram has what I call the Promethean fire, driving the emergence of new technologies and creating an entirely new future.
I first met Sreeram in 2019 when he was still an associate professor at the University of Washington and embarked on his entrepreneurial journey. Sreeram left a deep impression, and since then, we have had many interactions with him and the world-class team he built. In 2022, Sreeram delivered an inspiring lecture on EigenLayer and EigenDA in our summer research fellowship. Last year, he and Soubhik, the head of EigenLayer protocol research, published a comprehensive overview of Slashing cryptoeconomics on our blog.
Today, we announce that we are leading the Series B financing of EigenLayer and are excited to collaborate with Sreeram and the entire team to build a platform that opens up innovative new dimensions on top of Ethereum.
Entering EigenLayer
EigenLayer is a set of smart contracts on Ethereum that establishes a bilateral market for the original cryptoeconomic security: on the demand side, it allows creators to write code that effectively expands the functionality of Ethereum. On the supply side, validators participating in Ethereum consensus (if they happen to have the capability and required hardware) can choose to execute these decentralized services by re-staking ETH. Overall, EigenLayer is a decentralized and market-oriented mechanism for expanding the capabilities of Ethereum.
The significance of this mechanism is profound. We believe that by further deconstructing the relationship between cryptoeconomic security and EVM, EigenLayer has the potential to achieve 100 times the innovation speed in consensus mechanisms, novel virtual machines, decentralized oracles, bridges, and networks with dedicated hardware, just as Ethereum achieved 100 times the innovation speed in application logic by introducing smart contracts.
We are very excited to collaborate with Sreeram and his team to help them realize this vision.
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How big will the EigenLayer airdrop be? Bankless: $1800 per address.