The EigenLayer Foundation has announced a rewards program that rewards stakers and operators who actively secure verified services.
According to a blog post, the Ethereum (ETH) restaking protocol will also introduce a new incentive program that will provide 4% of the total supply of EigenLayer (EIGEN).
EigenLayer Foundation Announces Reward Enhancement Program
EigenLayer connects various restaking protocols, stakers and operators secure AVS by restaking ETH, and in return receive staking rewards.
With the launch of this new initiative, it will be the first time that stakers and node operators will receive token-based rewards directly from AVS via the EigenLayer protocol.
Meanwhile, 4% of the supply will be shared with beneficiaries through “Rewards Boost” distributions as part of the new EIGEN program incentive program.
In this case, stakers and operators will be rewarded in proportion to the distribution of AVS. This means that the more AVS a network participant supports, the more tokens the EigenLayer Foundation will distribute to them.
“The goal of this design is to incentivize AVS to distribute rewards to stakers and operators early, allowing them to benefit from the initial EIGEN program incentives and capture a larger share,” the blog post reads.
Programs that also help with new AVS
EigenLayer also plans to support AVS, which are not yet capable of distributing rewards on day one. Stakers and operators who support these AVS will still receive a small amount of EIGEN distribution.
The ‘Rewards Floor’ can be used outside of the main rewards boost to allow all genuine AVS to allocate some of their rewards to stakers and operators. EigenLayer says this will encourage new actively verified services to join the EigenLayer ecosystem.
AVS rewards will be launched in the coming weeks, with programmatic incentives launching in the coming months.
EigenLaye, which launched its contracts on mainnet in June last year, has seen over 4.8 million ETH and 108 million EIGEN re-staking, with 16 AVS released and over 300 operators.