EigenLayer Announces Second Season of Stakeholder Airdrop

Restaking protocol EigenLayer has announced the second season of its stakeholder airdrop, referred to as “stakedrop,” distributing 86 million EIGEN tokens to stakeholders, including stakers, node operators, ecosystem partners, and community members.

The distribution targets participants active between March 15 and August 15 and is set to begin on or before September 17, 2024. This follows the initial launch of the protocol’s native token and the first stakedrop announced in April. Stakeholders can claim their share of the tokens starting September 17.

EigenLayer is a platform that allows users to deposit and stake ether, aimed at securing third-party networks or actively validated services (AVSs).

The 86 million token allocation in the latest stakedrop represents about 5% of the fully diluted supply of 1.67 billion tokens. Of this amount, 70 million EIGEN tokens have been allocated to stakers and active operators during the Season 2 period. The allocation is determined by each participant’s pro-rata share of ETH staked.

Up to 10 million EIGEN tokens are set aside for AVSs, rollups, liquid restaking protocols, rollup-as-a-service providers, and other contributors to the EigenLayer ecosystem. The community segment, including open-source contributors, early advocates, and other supporters, will receive about 6 million EIGEN tokens. To claim their tokens, community members must verify their social identity by linking their wallet addresses to their social handles via the Eigen Foundation’s verification site by September 11.

The second season stakedrop comes as EigenLayer has experienced net outflows in recent months, resulting in a decrease in its total value locked (TVL). From an all-time high of $20.1 billion in June, the TVL has decreased to $11.5 billion.

Similar trends have been observed across the liquid restaking sector, with platforms like Renzo, Puffer, Kelp, and Swell also reporting significant declines in TVL.

This downturn in TVL across the sector may be linked to several factors, particularly the conclusion of airdrop campaigns associated with the launch of major restaking protocol tokens, such as Renzo’s REZ and EigenLayer’s EIGEN.

In contrast, Symbiotic, a restaking protocol competing with EigenLayer that has not announced a token launch, has seen an increase in its TVL, crossing $1.5 billion since its rollout in June.

EigenLayer has 1.67 billion tokens in supply. Although these tokens are not currently tradable, pre-markets such as Hyperliquid value each token at roughly $2.7, giving EigenLayer a fully diluted valuation of $4.5 billion.