Introduction

EigenLayer is a project that introduces re-staking. In short, it allows anyone to leverage Ethereum’s existing foundation of trust and security without having to build a similar system from scratch. In practice, EigenLayer users will stake their ETH. Behind the scenes, they agreed to secure another system outside of Ethereum, thereby adding some slashing conditions to their staked ETH. If they fail to secure the system, their stake will be slashed or lost even if they secure the Ethereum chain correctly. The point of EigenLayer is to lease Ethereum security to other projects, becoming the first marketplace for decentralized trust.

Efficient markets rely on the coexistence of sellers and buyers. Here, the seller is an EigenLayer user who re-stakes ETH through an operator, an entity that provides various services to the buyer. On the other hand, the buyer is Active Verification Service (AVS). The formal definition is any system that requires its own distributed verification semantics for verification. To put it more simply, they are projects using EigenLayer to enhance the overall security and functionality of their networks. Essentially, AVS is consuming decentralized trust.

Bootstrapping security has long been a pain point for new projects, limiting innovation. EigenLayer promises to change that. We anticipate a wave of AVS releases in the coming months, ushering in a new era of innovation in the crypto space we love. Let’s explore some of the most anticipated AVS.

1. EigenDA

EigenDA, EigenLayer’s data availability solution, is the first AVS to come online. Just like other alternative data availability layers like Celestia or NearDA, rollups leveraging EigenDA will benefit from significantly lower transaction fees and higher throughput. With scalability, security, and decentralization as its main pillars, EigenDA delivers a design capable of 10MB/s write throughput. While Ethereum currently only offers 83.33 KB/s, it is expected to increase to 1.3 MB/s through DankSharding. EigenDA has attracted the attention of numerous projects including Mantle, Polymer, LayerN, and Movement Labs. Additionally, RaaS projects like Caldera and AltLayer have seamlessly integrated EigenDA into their stacks, enabling developers to deploy rollups with EigenDA in one click.

2. AltLayer

AltLayer has partnered with EigenLayer to develop their restaking rollups. These rollups leverage EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism to enhance decentralization, security, interoperability, and efficiency. Re-staking rollups have three unique AVS: 1) VITAL for decentralized verification; 2) MACH for fast determining the nature of transaction; 3) SQUAD for decentralized sequencing. These features can be integrated into existing rollups as needed. Xterio Games is the first re-staking rollup to use MACH, providing near-instant transaction confirmations, an essential feature for a project like Xterio focused on AI Gaming. With MACH, Xterio is able to ensure that the finality is reached in less than 10 seconds without compromising security.

3. Omni

Omni is a purpose-built blockchain designed to securely connect all rollups through the use of restaking. With hundreds of different rollups, Ethereum’s users and their capital are increasingly fragmented into isolated ecosystems. The fragmentation leads to suboptimal conditions and poor user experiences. Omni aims to unify these rollups. Using Omni, developers can program across multiple Ethereum rollups in a standalone state. Applications built using the Omni EVM can live on all Ethereum rollups by default, giving developers the ability to integrate Ethereum’s entire liquidity and user base into their applications without restrictions. Omni is particularly interesting in the way it utilizes Eigenlayer, which not only secures the Omni network with the OMNI governance token, but also combines it with re-staking ETH to enhance the security of its network. We expect dual (and even multi-asset) staking to become increasingly popular in the near future.

4. Lagrange

Lagrange is building a modular ZK coprocessor that provides trustless off-chain computation. When developers perform large amounts of on-chain calculations, such as querying the number of Pudgy Penguins held by a certain address, they incur extremely high fees. With the Lagrange ZK coprocessor, this data becomes more accessible and less expensive. In practice, queries are moved off-chain to be executed, perform zk-proof, and to be verified in the contract. This ultimately makes it possible to develop more complex, data-rich applications, such as games. Since Lagrange is designed to be blockchain-agnostic, but it plays an important role in cross-chain interoperability, the integration of EigenLayer strengthens the security of these interactions.

5. Aligned Layer

Aligned Layer is the first universal verification layer built for Ethereum based on EigenLayer. In practice, rollups send their proofs to the Aligned Layer instead of Ethereum. The Aligned Layer verifies these proofs, aggregates them into a whole and then sends them to Ethereum. It is worth mentioning that what is stored on Ethereum is not the proof, but the verification result performed by the Aligned Layer. This approach is cheaper. It offers better interoperability, and most importantly, it allows developers to use any proof system, even if it is not compatible with Ethereum. By accepting a variety of proof systems, developers can now choose the proof system that best suits their needs, whether in terms of speed, proof size, ease of development, or security considerations, without having to worry about Ethereum compatibility or cost. While verification results are published to Ethereum, the actual proof is published to a DA layer such as Celestia or eigenDA. Regarding Aligned Layer’s use of EigenLayer, they will utilize a dual-staking model of re-staking ETH and future governance tokens, taking advantage of re-staking to ensure the security of the entire verification process.

6. Hyperlane

Hyperlane is the first interoperability layer that allows permissionless connection to any blockchain. Its main competitive advantage is its permissionless nature. Rather than having to fight for your chain/rollup to be supported by a cross-chain messaging protocol like Wormhole, Hyperlane allows you to use its services without permission. Specifically, this means that you only need to deploy a few smart contracts for your chain and you can use Hyperlane to connect your chain to other chains that use Hyperlane. Hyperlane announced the development of an EigenLayer AVS back in February 2023 to enable cross-chain application developers to securely send messages from Ethereum to other chains supported by Hyperlane.

7. Witness Chain

Witness Chain bills itself as the DePIN coordination layer that unifies the isolated DePIN economy. In practice, Witness Chain enables DePIN projects to transform unverified physical attributes (such as their physical location, network capacity, etc.) into verified digital proofs. These proofs can later be authenticated/challenged and used via different applications or the DePIN chain itself to build new products and services. This will ultimately allow DePINs to connect to each other, creating an end-to-end decentralized and infrastructure supply chain. WitnessChain ensures the state verification process for more than 20 DePINs project coordination layers through EigenLayer Operators.

8. Eoracle

Eoracle is a modular and programmable oracle network. The oracle network is a way for off-chain data to be brought onto the chain. Whether it’s NBA scores, weather data, or stock prices, blockchain can’t access this data without a reliable oracle. Eoracle leverages EigenLayer to build a network of oracles, or a network of people who view the data, agree on its accuracy, and record it on-chain. Eoracle will leverage EigenLayer’s Operators to perform this task, rather than building this network of people or nodes itself, and it will be interesting to see how this Ethereum-native solution competes with Chainlink.

9. Drosera

Drosera is an incident response protocol that utilizes covert security strategies to contain and mitigate vulnerabilities. In short, Drosera acts as a safety market where DeFi protocols can set a “trap” or safety threshold to determine whether an emergency response needs to be triggered. Once emergency conditions are met, operators will execute the protocol’s on-chain emergency measures based on the consensus mechanism. For example, Nomad may have set up a Drosera trap that was able to detect the illegal transfer of 30% of total value locked (TVL) in one block, thus preventing further loss of funds in the theft of $190 million in assets.

10. Ethos

Ethos provides a one-stop solution for Cosmos chains, allowing them to seamlessly leverage the security of re-staking ETH. Building a new Cosmos chain comes with a cost, which includes setting up a validator network. Projects must convince validators and users to hold and stake native tokens. To overcome this obstacle, Ethos built the Guardians Chain, an L1 verified by EigenLayer’s Operators that acts as a security coordination layer. Projects looking to build a validator set for their L1 can benefit from Ethereum’s security by hiring these Guardians as virtual validators. You can think of this process as a fork: Ethos is secured by Ethereum via EigenLayer, while Ethos provides security for Cosmos L1 for anyone who wants to avoid building their own validator set.

Conclusion

EigenLayer AVS offers endless possibilities. This article only scratches the surface of what they can achieve, and we look forward to more innovations in the future.

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