EigenLayer Adds Wrapped Bitcoin (BTC) Yield and Payouts From Node Operator P2P.org

EigenLayer, Ethereum’s largest restaking platform, is adding more restaking options, including wrapped Bitcoin (BTC) yield and payouts from node operator P2P.org

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol EigenLayer is continuing to expand its services, with the latest being the addition of more restaking options, including wrapped Bitcoin (BTC) yield and payouts from node operator P2P.org, as announced on Nov. 4.

ARPA Network, a protocol built on EigenLayer, will now pay rewards to those who deposit uniBTC, a restaked BTC wrapper, the protocol announced in a blog post.

“By adding uniBTC as a supported asset, ARPA opens up new liquidity pathways and reward opportunities for BTC holders,” the announcement reads.

Furthermore, P2P.org, which is EigenLayer's largest professional validator, also known as an “operator,” has distributed $2.2 million in Ether (ETH) to restakers on Nov. 4, according to the node operator.

Restaking involves taking a token that has already been staked — posted as collateral with a validator in exchange for rewards — and using it to secure other protocols simultaneously.

EigenLayer currently secures over 30 third-party protocols — called actively validated services (AVSs) — with more than $10 billion of restaked collateral, as per data from DefiLlama.

In October, EigenLayer launched a rewards program in EIGEN, the protocol's native token, in an effort to boost the adoption of restaking.

“Stakers will get programmatic rewards depending on how many AVSs they serve, and AVSs will pay fees to stakers and operators. The more AVSs pay, the more value gets allocated,” EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan told Cointelegraph in an interview last month.

ARPA utilizes EigenLayer to securely generate random numbers for a variety of applications, including gaming, lotteries, on-chain governance and more. It was among the first AVSs to begin paying restakers.

As of Nov. 5, P2P.org is responsible for over $540 million in restaked collateral, according to the developer's website.

The operator competes with dozens of others, including staking-as-a-service providers such as Figment, Blockdaemon and Ankr.

According to Kannan, EigenLayer is prioritizing the onboarding of consumer Web3 applications following EIGEN's Oct. 1 unlock.

On Oct. 23, RedStone, a major oracle provider, launched a data-validation service on EigenLayer.

The EIGEN unlock was highly anticipated in 2024 and puts pressure on EigenLayer to increase protocol revenue from AVSs.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, the token currently trades at a fully diluted market capitalization of around $4 billion.

According to EigenLayer, EIGEN is designed to protect protocols against a wider range of faults than those that can be addressed using existing proof-of-stake tokens, such as ETH.