EigenLayer to Start “Slashing” Restakers on April 17, Resulting in the Protocol’s “First Feature-Complete Iteration”

EigenLayer plans to start “slashing” restakers on April 17, resulting in the Ethereum restaking protocol's “first feature-complete iteration,” it said in an April 2 announcement.

EigenLayer is planning to start slashing restakers on April 17, kicking off the "first feature-complete iteration" of the Ethereum restaking protocol's new economic layer, it said in an April 2 announcement.

Introducing slashing will be the final step in establishing EigenLayer as "the core protocol and infrastructure for a new generation of verifiable apps and services built on the Verifiable Cloud," the protocol said in a post on the X platform.

EigenLayer started distributing rewards — including emissions of its native EIGEN token — to incentivize restakers in 2024. However, slashing has so far been limited to EigenLayer's testnets.

Once slashing is live, node operators and restakers will be able to voluntarily "opt-in," rolling out the new addition to users in a gradual fashion, EigenLayer elaborated in a blog post.

Slashing starts on EigenLayer's mainnet soon. Source: EigenLayer

Related: EigenLayer eyes consumer adoption post EIGEN unlock, founder says

Gradual roll-out

Launched in 2023, EigenLayer secures third-party protocols — dubbed actively validated services (AVSs) — against a pool of cryptocurrency that has already been "restaked" as collateral.

Restaking involves taking a token that has been locked up — usually in exchange for a revenue share or other benefits — and using it to secure other protocols at the same time.

Slashing is the primary method for securing proof-of-stake protocols — including Ethereum as well as "restaking" protocols such as EigenLayer — and involves penalizing a network's node operators for poor performance or misbehavior.

"If Operators do not meet the conditions set by the AVS, the AVS may choose to penalize the Operator. But, if the Operator pulls the service and maintains uptime, the AVSs can reward the Operator for performance and incentivize specific activity," EigenLayer explained in an April 3 blog post.

This "allows for a free marketplace where Operators can be fairly compensated for their work and AVSs can launch the verifiable services and activity they desire."

EigenLayer's total value locked (TVL) over time. Source: DeFILlama

Growing ecosystem

More than 30 AVSs are already live on EigenLayer's mainnet, and dozens more are being developed.

They include EigenDA — which is being developed by EigenLayer developer Eigen Labs — and ARPA Network, a protocol that specializes in trustless randomization.

In October, EigenLayer unlocked its native token, EIGEN. It is designed as a more flexible option for securing consensus-based protocols than other proof-of-stake tokens, such as Ether, according to EigenLayer.

EigenLayer is prioritizing onboarding crypto-native apps in segments such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming before expanding beyond Web3, founder Sreeram Kannan told in October.

"We're starting with the inside-out approach, focusing on high-throughput consumer apps like DeFi and gaming, but once we grow a little bigger and have critical mass, we'll go outside and start targeting broader consumer markets."