Sreeram Kannan, the visionary founder and CEO of EigenLayer, teams up with Robert Drost, the dedicated CEO of the Eigen Foundation, to discuss the recent launch of the EIGEN token. They dive into the mechanics of a universal intersubjective work token, designed to boost decentralized applications through innovative slashing techniques. Addressing community concerns, they outline their decision to redistribute tokens for fairness and inclusivity, emphasizing the importance of transparency and shared governance in the evolving crypto landscape.
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insights INSIGHT
Open Innovation and Trust
EigenLayer aims to foster open innovation by allowing developers to build decentralized protocols without bootstrapping trust.
It leverages ETH staking and a novel "universal intersubjective work token" (EIGEN) to penalize externally observable faults like data unavailability.
insights INSIGHT
Digital Commons
The "open verifiable digital commons" envisioned by EigenLayer aims to create decentralized, permissionless digital platforms.
Key characteristics of this commons are open participation and verifiability of upkeep, ensuring accountability.
question_answer ANECDOTE
DAO Hack and Forks
Laura Shin points out that EigenLayer's consensus mechanism could have prevented the contentious DAO hack fork.
Sreeram Kannan explains that the DAO hack resulted from an underspecified setup phase, where "code is law" clashed with community desires.
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Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
Laura Shin
The Cryptopians delves into the story of idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. The book focuses on the founding of Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin and the subsequent crypto fever it created. It introduces readers to larger-than-life characters such as Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, and Joe Lubin, highlighting the personal and professional conflicts that shaped the early days of Ethereum. The narrative explores the booms, busts, and internecine wars within the crypto world, revealing it as a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.
EigenLayer has been in the news this week after it announced its ‘stakedrop,’ where it will distribute EIGEN tokens to early users of the restaking platform.
Sreeram Kannan, founder and CEO of EigenLayer, and Robert Drost, CEO and executive director of the Eigen Foundation, discuss the launch of the token, a “universal intersubjective work token” and how it allows for slashing, or penalizing, for externally observable faults, such as data unavailability. The Eigen Foundation, a non-profit entity based in the Cayman Islands, was also recently established to grow the protocol and assist in creating a decentralized community.
They also address criticisms of the token's launch, including geoblocking and the initial non-transferability of stakedrops for the community and explain why they decided to allocate an additional 100 EIGEN tokens for all participants in the stakedrop. Plus, they reveal a target date by when a decision about the token unlock date should be made.
Show highlights:
The buzz around the universal intersubjective work token and what it was created for
What constitutes the digital commons and its two primary characteristics
How the EIGEN token is designed to prevent the necessity of forking an entire blockchain
Whether dapps should evolve into AVSes and EigenLayer’s complementary role to Ethereum, not replacing it
Why the Eigen Foundation was established and how it differs from Eigen Labs
Robert's response to the criticism regarding the exclusion of certain countries
Why EIGEN will be distributed linearly, despite it potentially favoring whales
EigenLayer's announcement of an updated stakedrop, after listening to community feedback
The critique of the vesting schedule and Robert's explanation of when the lock period actually starts
Why Sreeram believes that transfer restrictions are beneficial and empowering for users
Unchained 
