Key Points:

• EigenLayer pioneered Actively Validated Service (AVS), replicating the economic security of native Ethereum PoS consensus by re-staking ETH. This provides cheaper and more convenient security validation and computing services for various blockchain applications.
• AVS consists of stakers, operators, and users. Stakers deposit native ETH or liquid staking tokens (LST) into EigenLayer, operators provide security validation services, and users are the numerous Dapps that require security guarantees. This bilateral free trust market can form a mutually beneficial business model with significant commercial potential.
• The AVS ecosystem will become more diverse and prosperous under an omnichain environment, leading to fierce competition. The Restaking + AVS concept pioneered by EigenLayer on Ethereum is being imitated and expanded by other Layer2 and Layer1 ecosystems, giving rise to new protocols that share liquidity security across multiple chains. These new protocols exhibit numerous innovations in staking token diversification, cross-chain interoperability, incentive model innovation, and asset liquidity release.
• AVS offers decentralized, low-cost security solutions, reducing staking thresholds and enhancing flexibility. However, challenges such as insufficient technical maturity, security risks, slashing risks, and market acceptance still need to be addressed through industry exploration.
• With the rapid rise of EigenLayer’s Restaking mechanism, the total value locked (TVL) has surged to an impressive $15 billion. This changes the landscape of liquid staking derivatives and sparks endless imagination about the future development of the AVS ecosystem.

Starting with the pioneering AVS concept of the Ethereum restaking and security rental platform EigenLayer, this article explores the innovative technologies, operational mechanisms, potential advantages, and challenges of omnichain restaking. It provides readers with a clear and comprehensive insight into the AVS ecosystem.

Background and Significance of the New AVS Paradigm

1. The Real-World Context of AVS

Imagine that Ethereum’s block space is becoming increasingly scarce, and the “rent” is getting more expensive. To address this challenge, Rollup technology has emerged. Like efficient architects, these technologies package large numbers of transactions and data into small, neat boxes. These boxes are then verified for usability by Ethereum smart contracts, embedded into the Ethereum mainnet, and marked as secure and trusted. This saves users a significant amount of cost.

However, this process is not without its challenges. On the one hand, many non-Rollup Layer 2 products and protocols do not require the extremely high consensus security of the Ethereum mainnet, yet they still need to pay high-security certification fees. On the other hand, many projects that bridge to Ethereum via EVM often cannot be deployed directly on Ethereum and typically require a significant amount of resources and capital to rely on their own staking and validation mechanisms to ensure network security.

In this context, EigenLayer proposed a bold idea - AVS (Actively Validated Services).

Let’s first introduce EigenLayer. EigenLayer is a liquid staking protocol on Ethereum. It innovatively introduced the Restaking mechanism, allowing native ETH to be restaked and LST (Liquid Staking Token) to be restaked again at the consensus layer.

As of writing, the total value locked (TVL) on the EigenLayer protocol has reached 4.8M ETH (approximately $17B).

The operation process is as follows: stakers restake their ETH or LST assets to EigenLayer, and these assets are then provided to AVS for security. AVS Operators utilize these staked assets to provide validation services for small and medium-sized blockchain networks (application chains) that require node validation. After completing the validation service, the application chain pays a corresponding fee. These fees are distributed by EigenLayer, with a portion returned to stakers as staking rewards, a portion given to AVS as service revenue, and the remaining portion as protocol revenue to EigenLayer, thus forming a business model in which stakers, AVS, and application chains are interdependent and mutually beneficial.

In other words, EigenLayer’s AVS solution is to replicate the economic security of native Ethereum’s PoS consensus by restaking Ethereum. Although the PoS consensus security provided by stETH, pufETH, etc., is slightly weaker, the services provided by a subset of Ethereum operators are cheaper and more convenient, like low-cost validators serving a wide range of small and micro users. It not only inherits Ethereum’s rigorous security verification mechanism to a certain extent but also abstracts and modularizes it, providing it to projects with lower consensus security requirements in an unprecedented way.

Here’s a relatively extreme example: as long as there is a sufficient economic guarantee (referring to ETH) to support users’ immediate withdrawals on Layer 2, developers can allow Optimism and Arbitrum to bypass the original 7-day fraud-proof window.

In summary, EigenLayer’s Restaking mechanism allows ETH stakers to “reutilize” their assets by validating Ethereum and other trusted networks, which can be seen as renting out idle land to entrepreneurs, both activating resources and generating secondary income, with great commercial potential.

2. What is AVS?

From the above, we can summarize that AVS (Actively Validated Services) is an externally distributed system integrated with the Ethereum consensus layer through the EigenLayer protocol. It uses Ethereum’s consensus mechanism to validate transactions, enhancing various applications’ security. Its core promise is to provide Web3 trust guarantees for any computation, whether on-chain or off-chain.

Another noteworthy point is that AVS on EigenLayer can design unique consensus mechanisms (such as PoS, PPoS, DPoS) and rely on operators to run nodes to maintain the trust network’s security. This allows project teams to focus resources on functional development while reducing the value leakage from the Ethereum network.

In summary, as AVS continues to be built on EigenLayer atop Ethereum, these services add more value to the base layer of the chain and allow operators and users to avoid making choices between networks, further enhancing the value returns for stakers.

EigenLayer AVS Operating Mechanism

1. Participating Roles

The EigenLayer protocol architecture has three key components: Restaker/Staker, Operator, and AVS. We can also add the core contracts of the system’s decentralized services and infrastructure (e.g., delegation manager, slashing manager, strategy manager, etc.).

Stakers: These users lock up their ETH or liquid staking tokens (LSTs) of ETH (such as stETH) to support new networks and services and earn rewards.

AVS Operators (native restakers): Entities that run node software and manage and operate software for services built on EigenLayer. They are registered in EigenLayer and, combined with staker delegations, earn predetermined rewards by performing validation tasks. Of course, improper behavior by operators may result in the slashing of their staked ETH, thereby maintaining the accountability of participants.

AVS Demanders: These are various applications or programs that require distributed validation issuance to ensure security, including sidechains, data availability layers, new virtual machines, guardian networks, sequencers, oracle networks, cross-chain bridges, threshold encryption schemes, trusted execution environments, etc.

2. Operation Process

We have already discussed the general operation process of EigenLayer above. Here is a detailed breakdown of the operation process of AVS:

1. Stakers interact with EigenLayer and deposit their assets into the StrategyManager.
2. Stakers also interact with EigenLayer to select operators for delegation. This delegation process is handled by the DelegationManager.
3. Operators run the AVS off-chain client software specific to the service they choose. This client software is independent of the EigenLayer core protocol. Operators must go through the registration/deregistration process through EigenLayer’s delegation manager contract to become EigenLayer operators. Operator registration is a prerequisite for selecting and serving AVSs.
4. The components represented by the dashed box in the figure are optional depending on the interface design.
5. Each AVS developer can design and implement their own contract as long as its entry point (usually called ServiceManager) implements the interface expected by the EigenLayer protocol.

3. Security Protection Mechanism

As mentioned earlier, EigenLayer’s AVS is a simplified version of Ethereum’s PoS consensus economic security. So how can we implement certain security protection measures for AVS under such low security conditions?

The most important aspect of EigenLayer is introducing a node risk control mechanism, which guides nodes to operate safely and securely by dispersing validation nodes, introducing incentive points, and implementing slashing.

3.1 Node Risk Control

EigenLayer designed a system called “Decentralized Validator Cluster (DVC)” to disperse risk. This system ensures that even if some AVSs (actively validated services) have problems, it will not affect the security of the entire network, improving the system’s fault tolerance and security.

Additionally, through the design patterns of Hyperscale AVS and Lightweight AVS, a larger scale of ETH can be used to protect hyperscale AVS, balancing security and centralization risks.

Finally, EigenLayer allows individual Ethereum nodes (home validators) to participate in validation tasks, and the protocol’s AVS also establishes its own node quorums to operate together with the restaked ETH node quorum, thereby reducing the risk of manipulation.

3.2 Slashing Mechanism

If the operators engage in malicious behavior or fail to perform the required validations while participating in AVS, their staked ETH may be subject to slashing. The measures include not issuing fungible rights certificates, limiting operator collusion, and controlling unexpected slashing risks.

Slashing: Operators who engage in malicious behavior or violate their commitments will be slashed. Each AVS has its own slashing logic.

If operators choose to participate in two AVSs, they must agree to the slashing conditions of both AVSs.

No Fungible Position on EigenLayer: EigenLayer does not issue fungible tokens representing staking positions. This reduces conflicts of interest between position holders and node operators and allows different slashing risk regulations based on each user’s staking delegation choices.

Limiting Operator Collusion: This involves restricting the rewards for disrupting specific AVSs or allowing AVSs to monitor whether a group of operators participating in their validation tasks is also restaking in many other AVSs. This encourages EigenLayer operators to participate in fewer AVSs, thus increasing the cost of operator misconduct.

Resolving Operator Errors: The latest whitepaper, “EIGEN: The Universal Intersubjective Work Token,” explains how the EIGEN token addresses some subjective or objective security failures.

For intersubjectively attributable faults, issues arising from trust assumptions between blockchain and external entities (such as the correctness of off-chain information), it can be difficult to automatically identify faults between different entities. However, these faults are easier to identify and judge for external observers.

Currently, the EIGEN token can be used to address these risks that smart contracts cannot govern. The EigenLayer protocol allows for dual staking of ETH and EIGEN tokens to protect specific AVSs (currently limited to EigenDA). Restaking absorbs ETH to enhance decentralization within the blockchain network, while EIGEN token staking supports slashing-by-forking to address intersubjective faults.

When a majority of EIGEN token stakers engage in misconduct that causes system issues, external challengers who stake EIGEN can propose a new token fork to strip the malicious stakers of their distribution rights. Once the EIGEN fork is completed, users and AVSs can choose between the two versions. If social consensus confirms the misconduct, the new fork will replace the old one, rewarding the challengers and burning the staked tokens of the malicious stakers as a penalty.

Controlling Unintended Slashing Risks: Unintended slashing refers to accidental slashing vulnerabilities during AVS creation (such as code bugs). These risks are controlled through code security audits and the Governance layer’s veto power over slashing.

Others

EigenLayer employs a reputation-based governance committee comprising well-known figures from the Ethereum and EigenLayer communities to coordinate and manage security risks related to AVS.

This organization is responsible for upgrading EigenLayer contracts, allowing new AVS to enter the slashing review process, and reviewing and vetoing the events mentioned above.

Pros and Cons of EigenLayer AVS

1. Advantages and Features

Based on the above analysis, EigenLayer AVS has the following advantages:

Ensuring Decentralization

EigenLayer incentivizes native ETH stakers to participate in AVS validation tasks by explicitly designating or rewarding them. This mechanism allows staked funds that are diverted to decentralized services to flow back into Ethereum’s staking pool, helping to address issues of trust fragmentation and traffic fragmentation in Ethereum. Additionally, EigenLayer overcomes Ethereum’s compromise on flexibility in pursuit of decentralization, enabling innovative ideas to be quickly deployed on the Ethereum consensus layer, forming a symbiotic and complementary relationship with the Ethereum mainnet. This approach maintains long-term stability while also achieving the agility and flexibility needed in the short term.

Lowering Staking Thresholds
There is no need for a full 32 ETH threshold. Smaller stakers can participate in Ethereum security through the restaking mechanism, which reduces the network’s reliance on large stakers.

Low-Cost Application Startup
EigenLayer essentially decouples the consensus layer from the execution layer, allowing developers to design specialized execution environments and purchase consensus services/products as needed. Additionally, reusing Ethereum’s PoS funds as the consensus source lowers the pricing cost, ultimately providing AVS users with an inexpensive security layer.

High Flexibility
EigenLayer introduces the concept of free market governance. AVS can set its own parameters based on its risk preferences, such as the quorum of stakers (e.g., 70% ETH stakers + 30% AVS token stakers), slashing conditions, fee models (paid in AVS tokens/ETH, etc.), operator requirements, and their own AVS contracts.

Community Governance
EigenLayer encourages broad and reliable community participation and governance by organically integrating Ethereum’s conservative governance with a dynamic free market model, making the blockchain network more democratic and decentralized. EigenLayer introduces dual staking with EIGEN and ETH, using the EIGEN governance token to handle security conflicts. A governance committee is also established to coordinate contract upgrades, AVS slashing, and other matters.

2. Challenges and Risks

EigenLayer AVS (Actively Validated Service) demonstrates innovative potential and application value, but it also has several shortcomings and limitations, including but not limited to the following aspects:

Insufficient Technical Maturity
Currently, it is still in its early stages, with most functionalities being experimental and theoretical. Significant work is still required for actual deployment, especially in managing the complexity of multi-AVS fork mechanisms.

Security Risks
These include smart contract risks like hacker attacks, design/implementation issues, and potential vulnerabilities that may arise from integrating with Ethereum’s infrastructure.

Increased Slashing Risk
Participating in restaking could double the slashing risk, and once users delegate their tokens to a validator, they relinquish control over this portion of the risk.

Technical Implementation Challenges
The implementation of EigenLayer heavily relies on the stability and security of smart contracts. If these complex technologies have vulnerabilities or security issues, it could lead to significant financial losses for stakers. Moreover, since EigenLayer is closely integrated into the Ethereum node ecosystem, any technical execution flaws by operators could directly affect the overall security and efficiency.

Centralization Risk of Operators
High off-chain requirements may lead to a concentration of resources and expertise among a few operators, which can cause centralization and exacerbate unequal resource distribution.

Fairness of the Reward System
Different reward structures provided by different services might alter Ethereum’s current fair reward system, incentivizing operators to maximize their returns, and thereby disrupting the balance and fairness among validators.

Market Acceptance Challenges
User adoption and market acceptance pose obstacles to the expansion and popularization of AVS.

Current State of Omnichain AVS Ecosystem

EigenLayer pioneered the innovative concept of Restaking+AVS on Ethereum. However, similar protocol products have emerged in other Layer 2 and Layer 1 ecosystems. In fact, there are now multi-chain or even all-chain AVS protocols. These protocols not only support a wider variety of staked assets but also introduce innovative mechanisms related to cross-chain interoperability, sustainable incentive models, and unlocking asset liquidity. A brief overview of these developments will be provided below.

1. AVS-Related Protocols/Products Emerging Across Various Chains

We have noticed that around Ethereum and EigenLayer, a complex ecosystem of AVS-related protocols/products has already formed, and this trend is gradually spreading to other blockchain network systems. We have observed Bitcoin’s BouceBit, Solana’s Solayer, and Near’s LiNEAR, among others. These protocols have brought new perspectives to the market, expanding and enhancing the overall restaking landscape.

Symbiotic

Symbiotic Protocol is a restaking protocol supported by the founder of Lido and Paradigm Capital, aiming to compete with EigenLayer by expanding the variety and flexibility of staked tokens.

The core advantage of this protocol lies in its extensive token compatibility, not limited to ERC-20 tokens but also including various types of tokens such as stETH, wstETH, cbETH, wBETH, rETH, and potentially other assets that are not compatible with EigenLayer in the future.

In addition to broader asset compatibility, Symbiotic has designed a freely configurable layered design solution, which is more flexible than EigenLayer’s approach of directly delegating staked assets to node operators. This design by Symbiotic not only reduces a series of risks associated with staked assets but also allows users to customize reward mechanisms, improving capital efficiency and reducing operating costs.

BounceBit

The BounceBit protocol is a Bitcoin-based sidechain designed to enhance the capital efficiency and security of BTC through an innovative BTC restaking mechanism and a dual-token PoS consensus mechanism.

The protocol operates by allowing users to deposit native Bitcoin, BTCB on BNB Chain, and WBTC into regulated custodians Mainnet Digital and Ceffu, and then mint equivalent mirror tokens BBTC on the BounceBit chain. Users can then delegate their BBTC and BB to validators and receive LST (stBBTC, stBB) as proof. Nodes are selected as AVS based on voting weight, otherwise, they remain candidate AVS.

BounceBit’s restaking framework allows users to share security within the network, but due to current scale effects and the relatively low consensus security of the sidechain itself, the direction of development in this area remains unclear.

It’s worth noting that the Bitcoin network uses a PoW consensus with hardware miners and does not require node tokens to maintain network security like PoS mechanisms do. Therefore, the Bitcoin community often questions LRT protocols based on Bitcoin. The business route of leveraging Bitcoin’s economic security for AVS activities is still unclear.

Given the active development in the Bitcoin ecosystem, other restacking protocols, such as Lombard, Bedrock, Chakra, Uniport, and OrangeLayer Protocol, also exist on this chain, suggesting that competition in this field will become increasingly intense.

Solayer

Solayer Protocol is a restaking protocol within the Solana ecosystem, designed to leverage decentralized cloud infrastructure to provide users with restaking opportunities for additional earnings.

Users can deposit various assets such as native SOL, mSOL, JitoSOL, among others. In addition to earning POS staking rewards, they can also earn MEV and AVS rewards.

Solayer turns Solana stakers into validators and offers a simple way for decentralized applications to create their own AVS LST.

Solayer also allows users to design unbinding processes that do not exceed 2 days and provides an emergency exit mechanism to release bonded assets from users when AVS ceases operations.

Because EigenLayer services are mostly outside the Ethereum mainchain, Solayer refers to EigenLayer’s restaking design as Exogenous - Actively Validated Services (Exo-AVS). Solayer supports Exo-AVS but focuses more on Endogenous AVS (Endo-AVS) that operate directly on the Solana mainnet. Unlike EigenLayer’s replication of Ethereum’s performance, these Endo-AVS aim to provide greater block space guarantees for Dapps on the Solana chain and prioritize transactions to alleviate congestion issues on the foundational Layer 1 network.

Similarly, given Solana’s active ecosystem, there are other restaking protocols, such as Cambrian, Picasso Network, Fragmetric, and potential ones like Jito. Competition in this space is expected to become increasingly intense.

LiNEAR

LiNEAR Protocol is a leading liquid staking protocol developed based on the NEAR blockchain ecosystem. It allows users to stake NEAR tokens to earn LiNEAR as staking rewards. Additionally, users can participate in various DeFi protocols within the NEAR/Aurora ecosystem using $LiNEAR to earn further rewards.

The core of LiNEAR lies in its innovative automated node selection algorithm. This algorithm can automatically screen and monitor nodes based on preset standards, dynamically adjusting staking strategies by shifting funds from underperforming nodes to high-performing ones. This promotes a diverse selection of nodes, increases the degree of network decentralization, and enhances network security.

2. Exploring the Integration of Multi-Chain/Omnichain AVS Services

As the number of restaking protocols across various blockchains continues to grow, so too has the emergence of protocols designed to integrate these protocols across multiple or all chains. However, while this field has introduced numerous new concepts, the practical feasibility of many of these ideas has yet to be fully realized, and overall development remains incomplete.

From my observations, many protocols that claim to be omnichain restaking actually support a limited number of blockchains and tokens. Consequently, their progress in consolidating the consensus security of multiple chains and exploring seamless cross-chain interoperability has been quite limited. Nonetheless, this does not preclude us from conducting early observations in this area.

Currently, we can understand a narrow interpretation of omnichain restaking protocols as those that support a specific consensus asset across multiple chains. For example, Solv supports BTC, which can originate from chains such as BNB Chain, Ethereum, Mantle, Arbitrum, Merlin, and Bitcoin Mainnet. Similarly, StakeStone, through integration with cross-chain technologies like LayerZero, supports ETH from Ethereum and its sidechains and Layer 2 networks, enabling seamless transfer of assets and prices across multiple blockchain networks.

In a broader sense, omnichain restaking protocols can be understood as introducing the security of one or more tokens into one or more networks, thereby providing economic security.

For instance, Cosmos chains offer greater flexibility and interoperability, while BTC and ETH chains provide higher levels of security. Thus, Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer and Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon have been actively exploring the combination of these two approaches. Additionally, lightweight protocols like Persistence One have proposed restaking ATOM, TIA, DYDX, and other tokens on the Cosmos chain, enabling secure connections between various Cosmos ecosystems.

To illustrate this, let’s use EigenLayer AVS as an example. Ethos aims to bring Ethereum’s economic security and liquidity to Cosmos. To address the high costs and complexities of building a validator network on Cosmos chains, Ethos has introduced Guardians Chain, a Layer 1 security coordination layer validated by EigenLayer operators. This mechanism allows new projects to hire Guardians as virtual validators, enabling them to enjoy Ethereum-level security without having to build their own validator network.

Furthermore, Ethos aims to address the complex token economics and inflation issues faced by Cosmos consumer chains. Through its innovative restaking model, it reduces the need to build and maintain validator sets.

Of course, some developers have recognized that many decentralized services (such as cross-chain bridges, oracles, and RPC networks) inherently serve multiple chains. As a result, we have seen protocols like Karak and Allstake that extend AVS to multiple chains. These protocols enable faster integration of various chains and support a wider range of assets, including native Layer 1 and Layer 2 protocol tokens, liquid staking tokens (LSTs), DeFi LP tokens, stablecoins, and other tokenized assets.

Karak

Karak is an omnichain restaking protocol that supports a wide variety of assets, including LSTs, stablecoins like USDe and sDAI, and Pendle PT positions.

A key advantage of Karak is its unbiased design. This allows each chain to have a locally deployed restaking infrastructure and use its own asset set for protection. Additionally, a comprehensive suite of tools and SDKs enables developers to easily extend or create new features for their applications.

Karak operates similarly to EigenLayer. Restakers provide asset security, Distributed Secure Services (DSS) leverage these assets to enhance service security, chains or rollups utilize the services of DSS, and operators ensure the security of services, forming a closed-loop ecosystem.

Allstake

Allstake is building a broader “verifiable cloud” in the crypto space beyond Ethereum, enabling users to natively restake various assets (LSTs, LRTs, LP tokens, stablecoins, etc.) on multiple chains, including NEAR, Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and TON.

With the support of chain abstraction on the NEAR protocol, Allstake not only brings native restaking to all chains but also enables the construction of AVS with multi-chain signatures from day one.

The protocol consists of three core components:

• Allstake Hub: Built on the NEAR protocol, it manages all AVS and operators, tracking the deposit, delegation, and withdrawal status of all restakers.
• Client Contracts: These contracts on all client chains (including EVM chains like Ethereum and non-EVM chains like Solana) allow restakers to natively stake, delegate, and withdraw. Since Bitcoin doesn’t have smart contracts, restaking logic is implemented through chain signatures.
• Cross-chain Interoperability: Enables staking and delegation status synchronization from client chains to the Allstake Hub and execution of undelegation, slashing, and reward distribution transactions on client chains using chain signatures initiated by the Allstake Hub.

In summary, Allstake’s omnichain design emphasizes compatibility with multiple asset types and seamless integration with multiple chains. Aggregating or composing asset pools, it achieves a greater security effect.

3. Emergence of Derivatives Based on Various AVS Combinations

In the omnichain era, bridges, interoperability solutions, and other AVS will facilitate asset transfers, information exchange, and contract interactions between different chains. Inevitably, this will lead to the emergence of various types of derivatives issued based on different AVS combinations. These could include DeFi-inspired products such as yield maximization strategies similar to Yearn Finance or bribe-based incentives like Convex.

We are currently seeing platforms like Ether.fi, Renzo, Puffer Finance, and Eigenpie, which offer staking derivatives based on EigenLayer. By protecting AVS and providing higher staking yields, these platforms further simplify the complexities of selecting operators and reward strategies for end-users during the restaking process, acting as interfaces for the EigenLayer ecosystem.

StakeStone, on the other hand, creates a unified liquidity-unlocking mechanism for these underlying AVS assets. StakeStone packages the staked ETH and potential restaking rewards from various supported chains into a unified STONE token, distributed to applications in various ecosystems.

Therefore, unlike the liquidity exit mechanisms that rely on decentralized exchanges, the encapsulation mechanism at the StakeStone protocol layer supports users’ immediate unstaking liquidity needs.

However, while various derivatives based on restaking and AVS can further unleash economic vitality, risks will also accumulate. The Eigen Foundation recently stated that the creation or trading of EIGEN derivatives would harm the community, warning that participation in such activities would affect eligibility for future EIGEN airdrops.

It is foreseeable that we will see more derivatives or services based on restaked assets and AVS combinations in the future.

AVS Ecosystem Use Cases

The EigenLayer AVS ecosystem is currently the most well-developed, encompassing three major categories: verifiable Web2 infrastructure, Web3 infrastructure, and Rollup services.

Due to space constraints, we will briefly introduce some of the important use cases on EigenLayer AVS, ordered by TVL.

EigenDA
EigenLayer’s first data availability service offers a write throughput of 10 MiB/s and the lowest cost. Inspired by Danksharding, it promises to extend Ethereum’s DA beyond EIP-4844.

eoracle
eoracle is a modular, programmable oracle network secured by Ethereum and built using EigenLayer.

Lagrange
Lagrange builds modular zero-knowledge coprocessors to provide trustless off-chain computation, reducing the cost of on-chain computation. Its first two protocols are the zero-knowledge proof-based ZK Coprocessor and State Committees.

State Committees is a ZK light client protocol for OP Rollups, designed by combining EigenLayer’s restaking security with its ZK coprocessor.

The ZK Coprocessor is a centralized network for reliably generating different ZK proofs with high liveness guarantees.

Automata Multi-Prover AVS
Automata Network explores the development of multi-prover AVS on EigenLayer using TEE coprocessors. A decentralized system guides auxiliary TEE provers to minimize network disruptions and achieve better security and decentralization. This approach is enhanced by introducing TEE Committees, where both machine trust and cryptographic economic security constrain multi-prover AVS.

Cyber MACH (powered by AltLayer)
Cyber is a social-focused Layer 2. By expanding Web3’s focus beyond finance, Cyber enables developers to create dApps that change how people connect, create, monetize, and share value.

Witness Chain
Witness Chain provides verification services for DePIN, the first physical state consensus protocol unifying isolated DePIN economies. Witness Chain unlocks the shared economy integrating physical assets, facilitating the exchange of computational power, energy, storage, and other resources.

OpenLayer
OpenLayer is the first modular data layer aimed at modernizing traditional data flows. Powered by contributions from everyone and every device, OpenLayer provides a modular solution to coordinate data collection, verification, and transformation, meeting the needs of both web2 and Web3 companies.

Brevis coChain AVS
It is an intelligent ZK coprocessor that enables smart contracts to read and leverage the complete historical on-chain data of any chain and run customizable computations in a fully trustless manner to support use cases such as data-driven DeFi, zkBridge, and ZK identity. Using EigenLayer, Brevis coChain AVS achieves new cryptographic economic security through a ZK fraud-proof ZK coprocessor model. With Brevis AVS, developers can build data-driven dApps at a significantly lower cost compared to pure ZK models.

AltLayer MACH
A fast finality AVS for OP Mainnet and Arbitrum One. As an AVS, users can delegate ETH or LST to any registered operator. The deposited economic collateral to secure the MACH is then used to prove the validity of a given Rollup state, providing a fast finality layer for Rollups. It will provide end-users on these Rollups with the following core services: fast confirmation of Rollup transactions, cryptographic economic security to detect any malicious network participants, and decentralized verification of Rollup states.

Xterio Mach (powered by AltLayer)
Xterio is a Web3 game developer and publisher founded by gaming industry veterans, leveraging EigenLayer’s restaked Rollup technology to provide near-instant transaction confirmation and focusing on the AI gaming space.

Hyperlane AVS
Hyperlane is a modular, permissionless interoperability framework currently deployed on 35 EVM, Cosmos, and Sealevel chains.

ARPA Network
The ARPA BLS threshold signature scheme (BLS-TSS) network is an advanced decentralized cryptographic system designed to perform BLS threshold signature tasks. Randcast provides secure and reliable random number generation on multiple mainstream blockchains, leveraging the ARPA network.

Omni Network
Omni Network is an Ethereum-native interoperability protocol that enables low-latency communication within Ethereum’s Rollup ecosystem. Restaking enables Omni to set a new precedent for secure, high-performance, and globally compatible interoperability for the future of Ethereum’s modular ecosystem.

DODOchain MACH (powered by AltLayer)
DODOchain is an omnichain trading Layer 3 integrated by Arbitrum, EigenLayer, and AltLayer. As a Rollup-level liquidity layer, it connects Ethereum Rollups and Bitcoin networks, integrating liquidity into a single platform for seamless cross-chain trading. With its status as a Restaked Rollup, DODOchain provides decentralized verification and fast finality, significantly enhancing security and efficiency in the omnichain era.

GM Network MACH (powered by AltLayer)
GM Network is the first consumer-grade AIoT (AI + IoT) network. GM Network’s modular ecosystem aims to facilitate the mass adoption of AIoT by significantly reducing costs and barriers for developers. It consists of three main layers: asset layer, data layer, and user layer.

Conclusion

With the rapid rise of the restaking mechanism pioneered by EigenLayer, AVS (Actively Validated Services) has emerged as a new technological solution for decentralized security services and verifiable computation. It promises to eliminate the burden of building underlying trust networks.

In essence, this solution allows Ethereum mainnet validators to build cross-chain and cross-application security consensus by restaking LST tokens and being incentivized by a reward and penalty economic model. If Layer 2 or other applications/programs widely adopt the AVS consensus mechanism, it will essentially form a simplified version of a Based Rollup model driven by economics. This mutually beneficial ecosystem will significantly promote the diversification of the Ethereum ecosystem.

In the context of omnichain, the cross-chain/multi-chain/omnichain restaking economic ecosystem has fully exploded under the impetus of EigenLayer, exhibiting trends such as diverse types of restaked asset support, integration of more cross-chain interoperability, reuse/mixing of multi-chain multi-mechanism security consensus, and the birth of numerous combined derivatives. In short, the development of the omnichain AVS ecosystem will be more prosperous and diverse, and fierce competition will inevitably accompany it.

Of course, it is undeniable that the rapid development of AVS also faces challenges such as smart contract risks, unanchored liquidation of nested assets, operator centralization, and initial market acceptance. These systemic issues cannot be quickly resolved in the short term and require gradual improvement.

As an industry leader, EigenLayer is addressing industry competition and internal challenges by expanding AVS’s customization capabilities, improving security audits and penalties, developing cross-chain integration solutions, and expanding ecosystem partnerships.

It is foreseeable that as the technology matures and market acceptance increases, restaking and AVS will become important components of the blockchain’s secure and trusted architecture, leading the way for innovation in the crypto market ecosystem. We also look forward to seeing more innovative approaches from top players such as EigenLayer, Solayer, StakeStone, and Karak.

References:

https://techub.news/newDetails/?id=fb33fdafde3f437cb4ab4be766440661

https://www.panewslab.com/zh/articledetails/if7dpkf4.html

https://docs.EigenLayer.xyz/EigenLayer/avs-guides/avs-developer-guide

https://2039955362-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FPy2Kmkwju3mPSo9jrKKt%2Fuploads%2F9tExk4U2OdiRKGEsUWqW%2FEigenLayer_WhitePaper.pdf?alt=media&token=c20ac4bd-badd-4826-9fb6-492923741c9e

https://medium.com/@shixiangyyds/%E4%B8%80%E6%96%87%E8%AF%BB%E6%87%82persistence-one-%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E5%B0%86restaking%E5%B8%A6%E5%85%A5cosmos-3c5681cab02d

https://medium.com/nearprotocol/linear-protocol-launching-governance-token-lnr-and-unveil-restaking-support-2a46a329ab9e

https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/64568

https://x.com/poopmandefi/status/1809848249098072129

https://www.coinbase.com/de/blog/EigenLayer

https://medium.com/nearprotocol/introducing-allstake-omnichain-restaking-for-trustless-scaling-ca51930c884a

https://docs.allstake.org/technical-architecture

https://docs.exocore.network/exocore/faq/technical/what-are-the-main-benefits-of-an-omnichain-design

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yQpNu2xZAm9DVkc-Ci9AsQ

https://x.com/0xSumanth/status/1800151322563666240

https://app.EigenLayer.xyz/avs

https://www.bitalk8.com/article/24572

https://www.gauntlet.xyz/resources/inside-the-restaking-ecosystem-leading-protocols-and-projects

https://app.EigenLayer.xyz/avs

The article is based on the author’s independent research and analysis and is for reference only. It does not constitute any investment advice. Any information mentioned in this article should not be considered as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular project or strategy. The market has risks, and investment should be done cautiously. Gate.io does not assume any responsibility for the use of this article by readers or any consequences resulting therefrom.