This article will take readers to understand why the top VC a16z invested in EigenLayer. According to a16z, in general, EigenLayer is a decentralized and marketized mechanism that expands the capabilities of the Ethereum ecosystem. This article is sourced from a16z’s article “Investing in EigenLayer”, compiled, translated, and written by Shenzhen.
(Brief summary: a16z invests 100 million pounds in EigenLayer! TVL ranks fourth, closely following AAVE, and Ethereum’s re-pledging protocol is hot.)
(Background supplement: How many new airdrops and profits can be unlocked by Ethereum’s re-pledging protocol EigenLayer?)
Few people possess both foresight and the ability to bring about potential changes. EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan is not only talented and exceptionally intelligent, but fundamentally speaking, his future vision is clear and fascinating to the point that when talking with him, this vision becomes instantly real. Sreeram possesses what I call the fire of Prometheus, and he is driving the emergence of new technologies, thereby creating a completely 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 assembled. In 2022, Sreeram delivered an inspiring speech on EigenLayer and EigenDA in our summer research scholarship. 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 work with Sreeram and the entire team to build a platform that opens up innovative dimensions on top of Ethereum.
Entering EigenLayer
EigenLayer is a set of smart contracts on Ethereum that establishes a bilateral market for the original cryptographic economic security: on the demand side, it allows creators to write code that effectively expands the capabilities of Ethereum. On the supply side, validators participating in Ethereum consensus (if they happen to have the ability and required hardware) can choose to perform these decentralized services by re-pledging ETH. Overall, EigenLayer is a decentralized and marketized mechanism that expands the capabilities of Ethereum.
The significance of this mechanism is far-reaching. We believe that by further deconstructing the relationship between cryptographic economic security and the EVM, EigenLayer has the potential to achieve 100 times the innovation speed in consensus mechanisms, new 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 work 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.