EigenLayer Projected to be the Largest Airdrop of 2024, Raising Additional $100 Million.
Eigen Labs, the team behind EigenLayer, raise additional $100 million in funding to develop Eigen products
On February 22, 2024 EigenLayer shocked the crypto space by announcing it had secured $100 million in funding from A16Z, bringing the total funding to an impressive $150 million. This puts EigenLayer among the few crypto protocols that managed to clear 9 figures in funding. Although EigenLayer’s valuation was not disclosed post-raise, previous funding rounds valued the protocol at $500 million.
EigenLayer has seen immense growth in recent months. Since publishing my EigenLayer airdrop guide back in December 2023 Qualify for Three Massive Airdrops just by Staking Ethereum!, EigenLayer’s total value locked has increased eight fold, from just under $1 billion to almost $9 billion.
What is EigenLayer?
EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking, a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security. Ethereum restaking enables the rehypothecation of ETH on the consensus layer. Users that stake ETH natively or with a liquid staking token can opt-in to EigenLayer smart contracts to restake their ETH or LST and extend cryptoeconomic security to additional applications on the network to earn additional rewards.
Furthermore, EigenDA is another product under the EigenLayer product suite, currently live on Goerli testnet and set to hit mainnet in Q2 2024. EigenDA is a secure, high throughput, and decentralized data availability (DA) service built on top of Ethereum using the EigenLayer restaking primitive. EigenDA will be the first actively validated service to launch on EigenLayer.
For those familiar with Celestia and Dymension, EigenLayer essentially combines both these protocols into one, providing both DA and a settlement layer for chains, appchains, rollups and rollapps.
What will make the EigenLayer Airdrop so valuable?
EigenLayer is one of my highest conviction airdrop bets and there is no doubt in my mind it’ll be one of the biggest airdrops in crypto history. Taking EigenLayer’s private valuation of $500 million and extrapolating it with the recent $100 million raise (multiplying it by three), at minimum EigenLayer’s private valuation is sitting around $1.5 billion. Comparing these figures to projects that had similar raises and valuations such as Arbitrum ($143.7 million raise) and Optimism ($175 million raise), which now sit with fully diluted valuations (FDV) of $20 billion and $16 billion respectively. Take into account that I’m most likely lowballing EigenLayer’s private valuation, it is impossible to know without either EigenLayer themselves or investors disclosing this information.
We can also compare EigenLayer to it’s competitor, Celestia, currently the largest operational DA network. Celestia is sitting at a FDV of $18 billion at the time of writing. Dymension, a settlement layer for rollapps, who’s features are natively built into EigenLayer, is sitting at an FDV of $6.5 billion.
Taking these figures into account along with the EigenLayer airdrop most likely taking place in Q2 2024, post Bitcoin Halving, I believe we can conservatively expect EigenLayer to have a FDV of $20 billion at launch. Additionally, since EigenLayer is built on Ethereum, it naturally filter’s sybils due to high fees, therefore, allocating a larger portion of EigenLayer tokens to real users.
How to Qualify for the EigenLayer Airdrop
To restake Ethereum with EigenLayer, you can deposit LST’s directly into Eigenlayer Pools, however, this is not the recommended version as EigenLayer caps it’s deposits, allowing only a limited number of deposits every once in a while. Instead, I recommend to stake with a Liquid Restaking Provider such as ether.Fi, Swell, Kelp or Renzo Protocol to keep yourself liquid or to utilize the liquid restaking tokens (LRT) in DeFi. These protocols are also tokenless with confirmed airdrops to users who utilize their service.
For this guide You’ll need $ETH in your wallet on the Ethereum mainnet.
Restaking with ether.fi:
- Head over to ether.fi’s website and connect you’re wallet.
- Deposit a minimum of 0.01 $ETH into ether.fi to receive $eETH. Using my referral link we’ll both get bonus points towards our airdrops: https://app.ether.fi/eeth?address=0xBDbFdf3e82fC9d2bE1352e252aB1Ce2287fC2122
- Hold you’re $eETH in your wallet or use whitelisted DeFi protocols listed in the DeFi page to accumulated ether.fi loyalty points and EigenLayer restaking points which will be used to calculate you’re airdrop in the future. You’re accumulated points can be viewed under the “portfolio” tab.
Restaking with Swell
- Navigate to Swell’s website and connect you’re wallet.
- Deposit you’re $ETH into Swell to get $rswETH. Using my referral link we’ll both get bonus points towards our airdrops: https://app.swellnetwork.io/restake?ref=0xbdbfdf3e82fc9d2be1352e252ab1ce2287fc2122
- Hold you’re $rswETH in your wallet or use whitelisted DeFi protocols listed in the DeFi page to accumulated Swell pearls and EigenLayer restaking points which will be used to calculate you’re airdrop in the future. You’re accumulated points can be viewed under the “portfolio” tab.
That is all that is required. Remember to hold you’re LRT’s as this is the only way to accumulate EigenLayer points, which will be critical for the airdrop. Another tip is to monitor when Ethereum gas prices are low as these will be the cheapest times to deposit.
Conclusion
Like I mentioned before, EigenLayer is one of my top airdrop plays for 2024. With DA and restaking being a hot narrative in crypto this cycle, I believe even after EigenLayer conducts it’s airdrop, the token price will surprise many. In my opinion, this airdrop should not be faded, and if you’re comfortable locking a decent chunk of you’re $ETH until Q2 2024, EigenLayer will surely be a rewarding play.
Thanks for reading! For a complete database of upcoming airdrops check out my website Airdrop Analyst, the number one tool for airdrop farmers. A clap for my medium articles would also be greatly supportive of my work.
