EIGEN Tokens Will Become Transferable On Sept. 30

EigenLayer announced that its EIGEN token will become transferable on Sept. 30 after months of anticipation.

On Sept. 23, the EigenLayer Foundation revealed that it plans to remove transfer restriction from EIGEN on Sept. 30, allowing tokenholders to freely transfer and sell their tokens for the first time.

The foundation noted that staked EIGEN is subject to a seven-day withdrawal delay when unstaking. More than 100.5 million EIGEN are currently staked.

EigenLayer pioneered "restaking" on Ethereum, which allows ETH stakers to earn additional yields by secure third-party actively validated services (AVSs) while continuing to validate Ethereum.

EigenLayer quickly emerged as a top DeFi protocol after completing its mainnet rollout in April. While users were previously able to deposit ETH to the protocol and earn EigenLayer points, its mainnet launch allowed users to secure AVSs for the first time.

EigenLayer is currently the third-largest DeFi protocol with a total value locked (TVL) of $12.3 billion, according to DeFi Llama. The protocol holds 4.66 million ETH, down 14.2% from an all-time high of 5.43 million ETH in mid-June. EigenLayer currently accounts for 13.6% of staked Ethereum's supply.

Airdrop controversy

Despite EigenLayer quickly amassing an enormous TVL and giving rise to the booming liquid restaking sector, public opinion on EigenLayer quickly took a turn after the project unveiled the terms for Season 1 of its long-awaited airdrop in April.

Users took exception with their EIGEN being non-transferable (meaning they couldn’t sell their tokens), users from seven jurisdictions including the U.S. and Canada being geoblocked from claiming EIGEN, and the drop’s linear distribution resulting in small users receiving few tokens. EigenLayer responded by increasing all 280,000 eligible users’ allocations by 100 EIGEN each.

In September, EigenLayer announced that 86 million EIGEN or roughly 5% of the token’s supply would be distributed to users in Season 2 of its stakedrop. Claims for the second stakedrop went live on Sept. 17.

Last week, EigenLayer launched support for tBTC, a Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token, as a restakable asset. The move came amid moves from EigenLayer to expand its roster of restakable assets, with the protocol shipping an upgrade allowing AVS operators to support any ERC-20 token for restaking in August.