原标题：(EigenLayer moves past the drama with $11bn in deposits and a key role in Ethereum — Sreeram Kannan on what comes next)
By Aleks Gilbert, DL News
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
In an exclusive interview with Sreeram Kannan, founder of re-staking protocol EigenLayer, he talked about the protocol’s explosive launch and the lessons learned from the controversy following EigenLayer’s launch.
In the year since its launch in June 2023, EigenLayer has achieved the kind of start that many crypto projects dream of.
EigenLayer has accumulated about $20 billion in user deposits, and its parent company received a $100 million investment from a16z.
Even better, the project has quickly proven its worth: According to founder Sreeram Kannan, more than 100 projects have flocked to EigenLayer, including crypto exchange Kraken and interoperability protocol developer LayerZero Labs.
But EigenLayer may have gone too far, with a series of controversies, including allegations that it had tried to buy off some influential (and key) crypto researchers.
“Somehow, EigenLayer became the center of ethereum,” founder Sreeram Kannan said in an interview. “And we are not ready to be the center of a major ecosystem.”
EigenLayer currently has $11 billion in deposits. Although it may have originated in academia (Sreeram Kannan is a professor at the University of Washington) with the goal of creating a "free market for decentralized trust", its launch has become a classic story of overnight success.
EigenLayer makes it easier for certain protocols to launch by letting projects piggyback on the computers and ether (ETH) that run and secure ethereum itself, a process called re-staking.
At last year's Istanbul conference, Kannan likened the concept to a military alliance.
“Cities don’t have armies, nations have armies. Sometimes even many nation states coordinate and form alliances that are really cooperative,” he said. “It’s the exact same phenomenon. Shared security is definitely better.”
Some ethereum researchers quickly hailed EigenLayer as a breakthrough, but others warned that too many services relying on the same ether for security could undermine the stability of the blockchain.
In other words, if a project built on EigenLayer fails, then the staked ETH will also fail. In other words, continuing Kannan's analogy: if a city fails, then the entire army will fail.
In short, critics worry that this could lead to a cascade of failures that ultimately harm Ethereum itself.
To ease concerns, EigenLayer is rolling out a feature every few months, and later this year, EigenLayer will change its security model to limit the impact if certain applications fail.
But one attempt to emphasize safety did not go over well.
Earlier this year, EigenLayer hired prominent Ethereum Foundation researchers Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist as advisors.
They were hired to address the risk that restaking posed to Ethereum, and were paid handsomely, with Drake’s payout potentially worth millions of dollars a day.
Interests
However, this conflict of interest was not made public until a crypto KOL wrote an article on social media revealing it.
The lack of transparency not only goes against DeFi values, but also sparks criticism that the Ethereum Foundation is turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest.
“I am shocked that our Ethereum Foundation researchers, the people who guide protocol development, are receiving six- and seven-figure compensation packages from the protocol,” Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas wrote.
Both Drake and Feist said they would not compromise for EigenLayer's money.
Feist said that if implemented correctly, EigenLayer will bring "huge benefits" to Ethereum. "I believe the current leadership intends to do this, and I plan to hold them accountable for it." "If I believe that this is no longer the case, I will not hesitate to speak up and/or resign."
Drake pledged to use any money he makes from EigenLayer in the form of grants or investments for other Ethereum projects. “I am also prepared to terminate my advisory role at any time, for example, if EigenLayer moves in a direction that I believe is against the interests of Ethereum.”
The value of cryptocurrencies deposited in EigenLayer reached $20 billion at its peak
According to Kannan, EigenLayer held off on announcing the partnership at the request of the Ethereum Foundation, which wanted to disclose the relationship itself.
But crypto influencer Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie, wrote on X that researchers at the Ethereum Foundation are “taking life-changing funding” from projects that “may have incentive conflicts with Ethereum,” then mentioned EigenLayer.
Drake confirmed the relationship on his website and on X, adding that the cryptocurrency he acquired could eventually be worth millions of dollars.
Feist also confirmed the relationship, though he would only say that he was paid in “a certain amount of tokens.”
In response, Kannan claimed: "Even though people think this is something disruptive, it's not."
Full transparency
“It was completely transparent, we talked to the Ethereum Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation asked us not to publicize it. … They said, ‘We’ll publicize it ourselves, the right way.’”
But according to Kannan, the grant is also a token of gratitude to the two researchers, who have contributed greatly to shaping the direction of EigenLayer.
“EigenDA is a protocol built on the ideas of Dankrad and Justin,” Kannan said. “We want to reward the people who actually invested in and created these ideas.”
But as soon as one wave subsides, another wave arises.
Token Vesting
An article in August reported that Eigen Labs had pressured partner companies to pay employees a share of newly issued tokens.
Eigen Labs denied the allegation. Then in September, after some critics pointed to evidence that early, well-funded EigenLayer investors could circumvent token vesting, the company said such concerns were overblown.
“In crypto, being right isn’t enough. Generally speaking, when you want to build trust, you have to prove that you’re right, which is a much higher bar to meet,” Kannan said. “It’s really hard, especially for a project of this size.”
To address this challenge, Kannan said the company is investing more manpower to improve transparency standards.
"If we want to be the coordination engine for humanity, we need to be able to withstand this (scrutiny)."
Kanna once doubted that cryptocurrencies were a speculative bubble, but now he speaks like a true believer, often using impassioned rhetoric.
“I was having dinner with a U.S. congressman, and he asked, ‘Can you tell me why you’re in crypto?’ ” Kannan recalled.
“A lot of DeFi protocol founders say, ‘Improve the financial system to make it inflation-resistant,’ which is familiar and popular. But I say, ‘This is the biggest leap forward in human civilization since the Constitution was enacted.’”
Kannan, who was passionate about peer-to-peer networks, jumped into the cryptocurrency space in 2018. He wrote academic papers on the subject and eventually set out to create his own blockchain, called Trifecta. But he couldn’t raise funding.
If he succeeds in attracting venture capital, launching a blockchain will be easier, but it will also be easier if the new blockchain is based on Ethereum.
"EigenLayer is considered a mechanism that can solve the self-problem."
