Following the appointment of Justin Drake, a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, as an advisor to EigenLayer, another Ethereum Foundation researcher, Dankrad Feist, announced today that he will also serve as an advisor to EigenLayer. He will receive a significant amount of token rewards, but he emphasized that he will continue to speak out and that there are significant risks associated with staking, but there are also benefits.
The involvement of Ethereum Foundation developers or researchers in lucrative advisory roles offered by Ethereum ecosystem projects has recently sparked discussion in the cryptocurrency community. Cryptocurrency influencer Cobie raised concerns that Ethereum Foundation members holding dual roles may face conflicts of interest, especially if the project’s interests conflict with those of Ethereum.
However, at this time, Justin Drake, a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation who has been critical of EigenLayer, announced on the 19th that he will serve as an advisor to Eigen Foundation. He disclosed that his advisory services will earn him millions of dollars worth of EIGEN tokens over a period of three years, potentially exceeding the total value of his crypto assets (primarily ETH). However, Justin Drake stated that he will use all advisory earnings for investment or donation to Ethereum ecosystem projects, and if EigenLayer moves in a direction that is detrimental to Ethereum, he will terminate his advisory position. As for whether EigenLayer is systematically acquiring Ethereum Foundation members through financial means, he stated:
Following Justin Drake, Dankrad Feist, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, announced today that he has also decided to serve as an advisor to EigenLayer. Similar to Justin Drake, he joins in a personal capacity and does not represent the Ethereum Foundation. He focuses on risk and decentralization.
Dankrad Feist mentioned that although he serves as an advisor to EigenLayer, there are still significant risks associated with staking, including:
1. The issue of delegated agency: The operator may have different motivations from the funders, which may differ from the original design of the protocol.
2. Running staking services may impose additional burdens on stakers and may lead to centralization.
3. The staking infrastructure may be used to launch attacks on the Ethereum protocol, such as bribery attacks.
4. EigenLayer may give rise to a dystopia where staking services with dangerous designs dominate, and stakers will have to join because these services will provide the majority of staking rewards.
However, Dankrad Feist stated that when implemented properly, staking can bring significant benefits to Ethereum:
1. Staking can bring some benefits of liquidity staking tokens (LST) to individual stakers, making them more competitive compared to the current situation.
2. Ideally, Ethereum should already have a large data layer, but in reality, it is severely limited, and some projects cannot commit to becoming a rollup by publishing data on Ethereum. EigenLayer can provide a good temporary solution for these projects.
3. EigenLayer can also help achieve other things, such as block pre-commitment.
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