Airdrop Army

EigenLayer, the wild west of restaking protocols, just lit up the crypto streets with a transparency blunder that’s got everyone talking. They had to hustle this week to clean up a staking mess that left the community side-eyeing early investors for getting fat rewards while everyone else was left clutching their bags.

Restaking Realities, But Wait… There’s More

So here’s the kicker: investors staked locked EIGEN tokens and, yeah, cashed in on unlocked rewards while the public was chillin’, thinking those tokens were in circulation. Sneaky? Maybe. “Karl_0x” on X pulled out the receipts, saying 40% of all staked EIGEN sat pretty in 13 whale wallets. The token float? Misleading. People thought the market had more supply out there – nope. Not even close.

Kairos Research even dropped some numbers earlier, expecting 200 million out of 1.67 billion EIGEN tokens in play. But, uh, let’s back up a sec: during the first stakedrop season, only 85.4% got claimed, and in season two? An abysmal 21.7%. So the real circulating supply? Just 40.43 million. Yeah, talk about volatility when that 2.42% float has the market jumpy. Price discovery? More like a guessing game.

Docs Updated… Kinda Late Though, Right?

Once the community caught a whiff of the locked-token-rewards drama, EigenLayer had to scramble. They threw up a doc update on Sept. 30, trying to calm the chaos, but folks like “TardFiWhale” ain’t buying it. He called them out, saying this info should’ve been front and center, not after getting dragged into the spotlight.

What did the docs say? EIGEN staking rewards are capped at 1% of the total supply, and while investors can stake EIGEN, the real juicy incentives – 75% of ‘em – go to ETH stakers. Investors weren’t getting the good stuff from the stakedrops, just the future programmatic incentives. But even with that, the trust’s already shaken. And no, Eigen Labs and Eigen Foundation team members can’t stake for a year, just to cool things off. But the damage? Already done.

Tiny Float, Big Waves

With the float sitting at barely 40 million EIGEN, while the full supply’s a whopping 1.67 billion, everyone’s watching how this plays out. EIGEN’s hovering around $3.53 per token, and EigenLayer itself sitting on a $6 billion valuation. But, with such a tiny fraction of the token actually out there, buckle up. The ride’s about to get wild.