EigenLayer’s total value locked surpasses $10 billion

The total value of assets deposited to EigenLayer has risen around tenfold from $1.1 billion year-to-date, reaching $10 billion at the time of writing—some 2.93 million ether—according to DeFiLlama data.

EigenLayer offers a protocol for users to deposit and “re-stake” ether from various liquid staking tokens, aiming to then allocate those funds to secure third-party networks.

Part of the reason for this surge is the continued ether deposits on Eigen (primarily via liquid restaking protocols) coupled with the increase in ether’s price. The protocol’s stage 1 launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023. Within the next eight months, the protocol’s TVL had surged to over $6 billion in February.

Currently, only the native restaking with EigenPod is open.

The protocol’s strategy involves leveraging ETH’s economic security by accepting native ETH—which can be directly restaked by Ethereum validators—and liquid staked ETH, or liquid staking protocols. This mechanism (called restaking) can then be used to secure other protocols, though this feature is yet to go live.

EigenLabs closed a $50 million Series A funding round in March 2023 led by Blockchain Capital. Last month, Andreessen Horowitz led the Series B round, investing $100 million in EigenLayer.