Ethereum Restaking Protocol EigenLayer Handing Out 86 Million More Tokens

The Eigen Foundation, the organization behind Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer, is launching another airdrop rewards wave.

In a Thursday post, the Foundation said that a total of approximately 86 million tokens will be released from September 17 in its “stakedrop” and go to users and contributors who have actively helped the project.

The “Season 2 stakedrop” will dish out 70 million tokens to those who staked and operated nodes . Ecosystem partners and the EigenLayer community will receive 10 million tokens, and another 6 million tokens will go to open source contributors, advocates, and others who supported the community from the beginning.

“We’re excited to reward those who have put in tremendous effort supporting EigenLayer from the start,” the post reads.

“Whether you joined hackathons, wrote blogs, engaged on Twitter and Discord, or are an open source developer who made open innovation possible today, your efforts have been important to our growth," it adds.

EigenLayer previously launched an airdrop back in May dubbed “Season 1.” It allocated 5% of the total token supply—over 1.6 billion tokens—to users who engaged in staking activities as of March 15.

The EIGEN token is not yet available for trading. The Foundation previously wrote in an FAQ that it hopes to achieve certain "product and decentralization milestones" before unlocking the token for trading and transfers, but that those milestones " are targeted to be completed by September 30." It's unclear if that estimate is still current.

Airdrops are a way of attracting users to a new crypto project. A protocol will typically give out free tokens to previous and/or current users in the hopes that the community will grow and more people will flock to the project in the future.

EigenLayer is built upon Ethereum and is in the business of restaking—the ability to stake across multiple blockchains. The idea is that those who already stake Ethereum (ETH) can use the same staked coins on other protocols, with the goal of keeping them secure and earning additional rewards in the process.

Staking is the process of pledging crypto holdings to a network and earning yield in the process. Networks that use staking are called proof of stake blockchains. A number of top cryptocurrencies— Ethereum , Polkadot , and Cardano —use this consensus mechanism.