Founder of EigenLayer Responds to Vitalik’s New Article: Consistent with the Staking Philosophy

EigenLayer Founder Responds to Vitalik's New Article: Consistent with Staking Philosophy

Author: Sreeram Kannan, Founder of Eigenlayer

Translation: Felix, BlockingNews

In his latest essay “Keep It Simple, Avoid Ethereum Consensus Overload,” Vitalik Buterin states that re-staking is a set of techniques used by many protocols, including EigenLayer, where Ethereum stakers can also use their stake as a deposit for another protocol. In some cases, if they do not comply with the rules of other protocols, their deposit may be confiscated. In other cases, there are no incentive measures within the protocol, and the stake is only used for voting. While there are some risks with double-using validators for ETH staking, it is fundamentally feasible, but trying to “mobilize” Ethereum social consensus to achieve the goals of your application itself is not.

It is reported that Eigenlayer is a re-staking protocol built on Ethereum. Users can re-stake the ETH staked on the PoS node through EigenLayer to obtain additional income. They can also extend the utility of the Ethereum consensus layer to various middleware, oracle, sidechain and other protocols, as these protocols usually require nodes to run verification services. Re-staking can help these protocols reduce the cost of using funds while sharing the network security of Ethereum.

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As a leading project in the re-staking field, Eigenlayer has been highly regarded by capital. BlockingNews reported on March 29 that EigenLabs raised $50 million in a Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital, with other supporters of the round including Electric Capital, Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Finality Capital Blockingrtners, and Coinbase Ventures.

Shortly after Vitalik’s article was published, Eigenlayer founder Sreeram Kannan responded to the article on Twitter, stating that Vitalik’s risk analysis of using re-staking for different use cases is consistent with what the Eigenlayer protocol advocates, and provided a brief summary:

Do not:

1) Do not build complex financial primitives on re-staking: they may gradually disappear;

2) Do not rely on Ethereum to fork application layer errors: this is a very important principle;

3) Do not use subjective confiscation: because dishonest majorities will act arbitrarily.

Low risk:

1) Using re-mortgage for highly objective improper behavior (such as double signatures);

2) Using re-mortgage purely to obtain the decentralized advantages of Ethereum without confiscation. There is a third dimension to re-mortgage, which is its utility in making credible order commitments in Ethereum L1, which is not mentioned in this article.

These three basic trust models supporting Eigenlayer have been explained in previous posts, and the basic thought process is consistent with Vitalik’s article.

Thanks to Vitalik for writing this article, explaining the risks of improper use cases for re-mortgage, preventing Ethereum from having negative externalities, and welcoming this highly detailed analysis.

Related reading: Detailed explanation of middleware EigenLayer: How to provide secondary security for Ethereum?

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