Restake protocol EigenLayer has seen its TVL surge to nearly $6 billion in the past few days after deposit limits were temporarily lifted.
According to DeFiLlama data, assets deposited in EigenLayer have increased by about 170% from $2.15 billion when the window opened on February 5, reaching $5.9 billion (about 2.3 million ether) at the time of this writing.
According to The Block’s pricing page, TVL represents approximately 2% of the total circulating supply of Ether. EigenLayer is also ranked as one of TVL’s top five DeFi protocols, ahead of leading decentralized exchange Uniswap and behind Lido, Maker, Aave, and JustLend.
EigenLayer went through a series of deposit limit increases before temporarily lifting the latest limit of 200,000 Ethereum ($500 million) for each liquid staking token. EigenLayer’s TVL cap removal ends today at 3 PM ET. However, the project said it plans to eventually lift the cap permanently, enabling a “permissionless neutral environment while promoting decentralization.”
EigenLayer previously said the temporary removal of restrictions was designed to increase organic demand. However, many users have been encouraged to deposit funds and participate in the network to earn reward points, leading to speculation that stakers could potentially receive Eigen token airdrop rewards in the future.
What is EigenLayer?
EigenLayer’s protocol allows users to deposit and re-stake Ethereum through liquid staking tokens, allocating those funds to secure third-party networks and potentially earn additional rewards. Through a liquid staking solution, users can Ethereum ETH
+2.96%
Stake while unlocking the value of the underlying asset with liquid staking tokens for use as collateral in DeFi.
The initial phase of the Eigenayer protocol was launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023, allowing users to deposit LST from three staking projects: Lido, Rocket Pool, and Coinbase. The protocol has since expanded with additional LSTs, including Stakewise’s sETH, Mantle’s mETH, Frax’s sfrxETH, Ankr’s ankrETH, and Binance’s wBETH.
EigenLayer’s team, EigenLabs, closed a $50 million Series A funding round led by Blockchain Capital in March 2023. Last month, EigenLayer announced plans to adopt a shared security model. I bet ether. The project aims to become a major decentralized application platform and enable other projects to launch by leveraging the so-called shared security model.
Yesterday, the percentage of Ether supply staked on the Ethereum network reached 25% for the first time.
The Block has reached out to EigenLayer for comment.
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