Original author: Haotian (X: @tmel0211 )
Putting aside the neutrality of the core members of the Ethereum Foundation serving as consultants to @eigenlayer, in terms of its technical value, Eigenlayer is really too important to the future development of Ethereum in the long run. In order to avoid everyone falling into the emotional misjudgment of hating the whole thing, I would like to share some of my personal understandings for reference:
1) Many people are aware of the value of Lido to the Ethereum ecosystem. It manages a group of Validators, lowers the high threshold of 32 ETH required for users to participate in the node, and avoids complex node system maintenance. At the same time, stETH can re-release liquidity to avoid asset lock-in.
In general, Lido increases the total staking rate of the Ethereum POS network and enhances network security. Simply put, Lido strengthens Ethereums internal security and defense system;
In contrast, Eigenlayer aims to enhance Ethereum’s “external” influence and security consensus service capabilities. On the one hand, it reuses the pledged security of the LSD platform, allowing some of its enhanced Validators to provide services to multiple application networks at the same time, radiating security influence outside of Ethereum, especially to the Rollup ecosystem.
In essence, Eigenlayer has built a programmable security market that allows Ethereums core security resources to be allocated on demand, thereby enhancing the market position of Ethereums security settlement layer under the trendy chain unification ideas such as modularity and chain abstraction.
To some extent, Eigenlayer has strengthened Ethereums external investment attraction and influence system. When Zheng He sailed to the West during the Ming Dynasty, the feeling was not obvious, but in the Qing Dynasty, the feeling was very profound.
2) Allowing pledged assets to be pledged again, the same asset has two layers of security attributes superimposed. On the surface, Eigenlayer adds a layer of leverage to Ethereum. However, from DeFi, NFT, Metaverse to the new cycle of layer 2, the underlying core logic of the original rise of Ethereum tokens is only one: innovative events drive Fomo sentiment, trigger network congestion, and then give rise to ETH deflationary stimulus rise.
The governance, mining, farming and golden shovel yield logic brought by DeFi, NFT, etc. may be criticized as a nesting doll game if you are too picky, but it does not affect its ability to drive Ethereum into a far-reaching bull market.
Layer 2 started with the involutionary Rollup paradigm, and then moved on to the RaaS one-piece chain wave. It was also following Ethereum’s deflationary logic, but as I analyzed in my previous article, the abundance of blobs space after the Cancun upgrade and the low gas fees of layer 2, these technological advances, unexpectedly broke this market logic.
Therefore, Ethereum’s “deflation” logic is no longer feasible, and it can only continue to follow the logic of stacking “leverage”.
Because in the long run, Ethereums consensus status and influence will not be affected. The off-chain security consensus requirements, modular extension, and chain abstraction integration will not isolate Ethereums market position. How to strengthen Eigenlayers security consensus commercialization output capabilities is very important for Ethereum.
Only in this way can more ETH and various LST assets lock liquidity, consolidate the underlying security consensus of the POS chain, and provide Ethereum with sustained growth momentum. Although this association logic is far-fetched, there is no better choice.
3) Recently, Eigenlayer founder @sreeramkannan and several layer 2 project researchers including Optimism had a Twitter debate. The topic of discussion is not unfamiliar, technical consensus VS social consensus, which is more important? We often say that the development strategy of Ethereum layer 2 is getting bigger and bigger, and the strategy is getting out of control. Why?
For example: layer 2 @Optimism has incorporated a social consensus priority principle: using the OP Stack technology open source framework to attract resources, using the OP token big pot to distribute unified strategic alliances, and then using a unified security committee and a shared centralized sequencer to solve the Superchain alliances interoperability issues.
Doing so may work at the current stage, but it deviates from the highest principle of technology first. Perhaps unifying social consensus (aligning common interests) can indeed reduce the possibility of individuals doing evil, but this is not a reason to reject decentralized sequencers and delay the implementation of technical frameworks such as fraud proofs.
Although Eigenlayer is a set of middleware network consensus, the concept it advocates is indeed technology first. It uses Tokenomics design to allow verification nodes to release a wider range of service capabilities and business scope, but its underlying logic is still POS staking mining. Nodes must stake to participate in consensus decision-making. Once malicious behavior occurs, assets will be confiscated by Slash. This is also consistent with the core of Ethereums consolidation of underlying security capabilities.
Whats more, Eigenlayers AVS already has network consensus layers such as decentralized Oracle, decentralized Sequencer, decentralized DA, and decentralized preconfs, which will form obvious complementarity with the loose layer 2 dominated by social consensus.
Therefore, Eigenlayer is crucial to Ethereums Rollup-Centric strategys ability to maintain the consensus principle of technology first.
above.
As a composable, on-demand distributed commoditized security consensus, Eigenlayer gives the Ethereum ecosystem great ecological flexibility, which is a powerful weapon for Ethereum to face external competition from various high-performance chains.
In short, from an optimistic point of view, although the story told by Eigenlayer at this stage is very illusory, without this layer of technology and commercial expansion story, how can Ethereum support its central position in the future blockchain public chain?
Dont just give in blindly, give it some patience and time.
