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EigenLayer, raised $64.5 million: A New Narrative for the Repledge Circuit

以南说

2023-05-17 16:22

Read this article in 16 Minutes

Eigenlayer has a very good vision for a repledge solution that provides multiple benefits for repledgers and releases increased security for protocol innovators

Yinan said south

background

Bitcoin has ushered in the era of decentralized trust, but the specific nature of its application limits the development of new decentralized applications.

Ethereum, through the concept of full programming and modular blockchain, enables DApps to be built on top of its trust network without permission, decoupling innovation from trust and driving the development of a pseudo-anonymous economy. Then, as Ethereum moved to a rollup-centric development path, the number of applications that could be built on it without licenses increased dramatically. By outsourcing the execution to a single node or a small group of nodes, but being able to absorb the trust of Ethereum by providing proof computing to Ethereum, permission-free innovation has been further promoted, leading to a boom in various proof technologies.

However, any module that cannot be deployed or proven on top of EVM cannot absorb Ethereum's aggregate trust.Such modules involve processing input from outside Ethereum, so their processing cannot be verified in the internal Ethereum protocol. Examples of such modules include side chains based on new consensus protocols, data availability layers, new virtual machines, keeper networks, prophet networks, Bridges, threshold encryption schemes, and trusted execution environments.

Typically, such modules require active validation services, which have their own distributed validation semantics for validation. Typically, these active validation services (" AVS ") are either protected by their own native tokens or require licensing in nature.

The organization of AVS ecosystems has four basic shortcomings:

New AVS startup issue:Innovators wishing to develop new AVS must start a new network of trust to gain security.

Value leakage:Since each AVS develops its own trust pools, users pay not only the fees paid to those pools, but also Ethereum transaction fees. This shift in cost flows leads to a leakage of value in Ethereum.

Burden of cost of capital:The verifier who pledges to protect the new AVS must bear the capital cost, which is equivalent to the opportunity cost and price risk of the pledge in the new system. AVS must therefore offer a pledge return high enough to cover this cost. For most AVS in operation today, the cost of capital pledged is much higher than any operating cost. For example, consider a data availability layer with $10 billion in pledge protection, assuming that the mortgagee expects an annualized rate of return (APR) of 5%. The AVS need to return at least $500m a year to the mortgagee to cover the cost of capital. This is far greater than the operational costs associated with data storage or network costs.

The trust model for DApps is low:The current AVS ecosystem creates a less-than-ideal security dynamic: Typically, any middleware dependency of a DApp can become a target for attack. Thus, the corruption costs of Dapps must generally be seen as at least no more than the minimum cost of corrupting their dependence.

And EigenLayer

Officially, EigenLayer is an Ethereum repledge collection, a set of smart contracts on Ethereum that allow consensus-Layer Ether (ETH) pledge holders the option of validating new software modules built on top of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The pledge extends the security of the crypto economy by granting EigenLayer smart contracts to opt in by imposing additional penalty conditions on the ETH they pledge (engaging in dishonesty at the risk of reducing the penalty on the ETH they pledge).

A pledge that elects to EigenLayer can validate many types of modules,These include consensus protocols, data availability layers, virtual machines, keeper networks, prophet networks, cross-chain Bridges, threshold encryption schemes, and trusted execution environments.

EigenLayer offers a new performs-free platform for innovation; rather than having to build their own network of trust to implement new distributed authentication modules, innovators can rely on EigenLayer for the security and decentralization they provide through ETH repledors, thus saving money and enjoying the security on Ethereum.

To summarize:EigenLayer uses a suite of smart contracts to EigenLayer to participate in authenticating different networks and services, saving costs for third-party protocols and gaining Ethereum security, giving them multiple benefits and flexibility.

Object oriented

Repledgee:You can earn rewards for helping to operate and secure various networks and services built on Ethereum, such as the data availability layer, decentralized sequester, and bridge.

Active verification service provider:Third parties, such as Chainlink, include consensus protocols, data availability layers, virtual machines, keeper networks, prophet networks, cross-link Bridges, threshold encryption schemes, and trusted execution environments.

面临的风险：

1. Many carriers may collude to attack a group of AVS

Ideally, all operators transfer their pledge to all AVS, and the cost of corrupting any AVS on the EigenLayer is now proportional to the total amount of pledge in the EigenLayer. This is the best one could hope for in terms of maximising the costs of corruption. However, in a realistic scenario where only a subset of operators choose to participate in a given AVS, then there is a sophisticated attack where some operators may collude to steal money from a group of AVS. Especially if only a small percentage of pledgers participate in the re-pledge of multiple services, then the system may become economically insecure in cryptography.

One solution is to limit the PFCS (Potential Financial Cost) of any particular AVS. For example, (1) the bridge can limit the flow of value during the reduction period, (2) the predictor can have a boundary on the total value during the transaction period, etc. Another solution is that EigenLayer can actively increase the CoC (Cost of Corruption) of AVS

2.Built on EigenLayer, the AVS could have unexpected cutting holes

This is the risk of the honesty node being cut. For example, an AVS is created with an unintentional cut vulnerability (for example, a programming error) that is triggered and causes the honest user to lose money. Here, the team proposes a line of defense: (1) security audit; (2) The ability to veto sequestration.

3. Eigenlayer has its own intelligent contract risk

用例：

EigenLayer supports many use cases, including MEV management, Data Availability Layer (DA), decentralized sequester, light node bridge, and fast mode bridge, among others.

测试网提供的质押选项：

Liquidity repledge:Liquidity pledge is a service that allows users to deposit their ETH into a pledge pool and receive a liquidity pledge token in return (as offered by Lido and RocketPool). The pledgee may deposit liquidity pledge tokens in EigenLayer. There are different options here, such as ETH LP repledge.

Primary repledge:This option is suitable for independent pledgees/family pledgees who want to native repledge their same pledge ETH. When they pledge within the Ethereum protocol, they need to specify a withdrawal voucher, which is the account that has the right to withdraw the pledge. To participate in EigenLayer, you need to assign this credential to the EigenLayer smart contract. (L1 EigenLayer)

团队

The team is based primarily in Seattle, Washington. Founder Sreeram Kannan is a professor at the University of Washington and director of the University of Washington Blockchain Lab. The first members of the team came from the lab.

融资情况

It raised $64.5 million in two rounds.

Seed round announced in August 2022 that it raised $14.5 million in a seed round led by polychaincap +etherealvc. FigmentCapital , daofive, robotventures , P2Pvalidator and so on.

A 轮融资于 2023 年 3 月宣布由 blockchaincap 领投中筹集了 5000 万美元，ElectricCapital、polychaincap 、 hack_vc、FinalityCap、cbventures 等参投。

项目进程

At present, the project is in the phase I test network stage, and the launch of Phase I test network was announced on April 6, 2023. And write the non-incentive test net.

The agreement will be launched in three phases: Pledge, carrier, and Service. The first stage is now for the pledgee. The pledgee may participate in liquidity repledge and local repledge. Later, the pledgee will be able to entrust their own repledge to the operator without the need to verify themselves, which is similar to proxy voting.

According to the latest community meeting AMA, the mainnet will be launched soon. According to Discord Mod, there is currently no token program, so there is no token economics. (As a repledge agreement, the financing is tens of millions of yuan. If only the value capture of the agreement is used to obtain income, there are few such projects at present.)

总结

With Ethereum's pledge rate rising and the need for repledge protocols increasing, Eigenlayer's proposed new repledge solution is very promising in terms of vision, providing multiple benefits for repledors, unlocking increased security and cost savings for protocol innovators, and from the current beta network phase, only the repledge part can operate. The first project on Eigenlayer will also be the team's own EigenDA, a massive data availability layer that Espresso Systems is developing Espresso Sequencer, and they plan to use EigenLayer for re-pledge, Mantle planned to use the data availability (DA) layer of EigenLayer, and these innovators deployed on Eigenlayer need to pay the verifier service fee, and the security they enjoy is also affected by the number of nodes participating in verification, so whether more protocol innovators or middleware can be attracted in the future? This is hard to say, anyway, the narrative is good, a little nesting doll but not exactly nesting doll, keep an eye on it.