Airdrop Army

EIGEN Makes its Mark on Binance and Beyond

EigenLayer’s EIGEN token wasted no time climbing the ranks. It cracked the top 100 tokens by market cap after launching for trading on October 1st. According to CoinMarketCap, EIGEN slid into 94th place. So, now it’s sitting above Ethena but still trailing behind big guns like Optimism, Uniswap, and Filecoin.

At launch, Binance showed the token trading between $3.50 and $4.50 per token. By 5:00 am UTC, EIGEN unlocked and started flowing through the exchanges. The current price is hovering around $3.85, setting the fully diluted valuation (FDV) at $6.5 billion. Aylo, Alpha Please’s pseudonymous founder, chimed in, stating that the token “launched exactly in line with pre-market price,” pegging its FDV closer to $7 billion.

Price Movements Signal Growing Interest

While some heavy-hitters are priced above EIGEN, it’s clear this token didn’t just show up to play—it came for more. A person with knowledge of over-the-counter (OTC) trades said deals were happening at around $3.50 as recently as September 24. That marks a sharp jump from informal trading prices of about $2 back in August. Not to mention, these details match conversations going on in EigenLayer’s community forums. So, it’s no surprise that this token’s rise caught some attention.

Aylo added more fuel to the fire, sharing, “6 months ago I’m not sure anyone would have said that EIGEN would be valued less than those above coins.”

EigenLayer has been making headlines, with some calling it the “innovation on Ethereum this cycle,” given its widespread coverage throughout the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem.

Airdrops, Staking, and AVS Rewards: Utility Beyond Price

EigenLayer didn’t just give EIGEN out to tokenholders in May. Those tokens were locked up until October, creating pent-up interest. But as soon as they were unlocked, EigenLayer’s retakers—those staking tokens to secure other networks or “actively validated services” (AVS)—started earning.

DefiLlama reports show EigenLayer now commands $12 billion in total value locked (TVL). AVS platforms like EigenDA have started paying rewards in both EIGEN and Ether since August. Other networks, including Arpa Network, are already joining in. As more protocols adopt EigenLayer, those retakers could stand to benefit even more.