Overview: Mapping the Eigen Layer ecosystem

EigenLayer in a Nutshell

EigenLayer is a protocol developed on Ethereum that introduced one of the most trending narratives: Restaking. The concept of Restaking allows decentralized protocols to benefit from Ethereum’s economic security (i.e., ETH staked on the network) to build their own trust layer.

In other words, users can stake their ETH on the main network—either natively or through liquid staking solutions—and restake them through EigenLayer in other protocols simultaneously. This increases user yields while fostering an ecosystem where security resources are pooled and amplified.

Launched in 2021 by Sreeram Kannan, EigenLayer has raised over $164 million, including a $100 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in February 2024. Since the mainnet deployment in April 2024, EigenLayer has seen exponential growth, reaching a TVL of $11.5 billion as of September 1, 2024.

To provide an overview of the EigenLayer ecosystem, it's important to highlight the various stakeholders. Here are the key players:

• Restakers: Users who directly contribute to EigenLayer’s operation by depositing assets—either natively (in the form of Ether) or through liquid staking tokens (Lido’s stETH, Swell’s swETH, RocketPool’s rETH, etc.).
• Operators: Entities registered with EigenLayer that receive delegations from platform users. They can be individual or professional operators, developing the technical infrastructure necessary to host nodes on partner protocols.
• AVS (Actively Validated Services): Protocols built on top of EigenLayer that wish to benefit from Restaking and, by extension, Ethereum’s economic security. These are selected by the EigenLabs foundation through a strict selection process.

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Overview of EigenLayer’s AVS

Automata

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: TEE

Automata is a security platform providing the Ethereum ecosystem with robust on-chain verifications based on hardware, improving the reliability of interactions and transactions. Automata’s infrastructure relies on TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) coprocessors that perform secure computations in isolated hardware enclaves, offering modular, secure, and reliable attestation to blockchains.

AltLayer

Category: Rollup Services

Subcategory: Rollup-as-a-service

AltLayer is a decentralized “Rollup-as-a-Service” protocol designed to simplify the launch of customized appchains. The network supports various rollup infrastructures, including Optimism’s OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK, and zkSync ZK Stack. It also provides access to data availability solutions like Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail, and benefits from Ethereum’s economic security through Restaking.

ARPA Network

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: Encrypted Computation

ARPA Network is a decentralized network that executes advanced cryptographic systems for tasks like signatures. ARPA’s first tool, Randcast, is a random number generator essential for blockchain encryption. The infrastructure is based on complex cryptographic principles and Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature schemes.

Brevis Network

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: ZK

Brevis Network is a modular infrastructure designed to offer solutions for data processing, verification, and computation using Zero Knowledge Proof technology. Through a decentralized coprocessor, Brevis enables smart contracts to read and process complete historical data from all supported blockchains, executing customizable computations in a secure and verifiable manner.

Cyber

Category: Web3

Subcategory: Layer 2 / SocialFi

Cyber is a second-layer solution on Ethereum specifically designed to support social applications and optimized for mass adoption. The network is built on Optimism’s OP Stack, offering interoperability with EVM-compatible blockchains. Cyber aims to allow developers to build mainstream applications through native features such as account abstraction and seedless wallets.

DODOchain

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Interoperability

DODOchain is a layer 3 solution built on Arbitrum Orbit, positioned as the first platform to efficiently connect Bitcoin and Ethereum’s second-layer networks. DODOchain aims to be a liquidity layer uniting various chains (EVM and non-EVM), supporting a range of services (exchanges, lending, liquidity provision, launchpads, etc.) to offer users a fast, efficient, and secure environment.

EigenDA

Category: Rollup Services

Subcategory: Data Availability

EigenDA is the first AVS built on EigenLayer, developed by the EigenLabs team, which also created the Restaking protocol. The protocol offers a secure and decentralized data availability service, allowing rollups to publish their data on its infrastructure with reduced transaction costs, higher throughput, and better composability.

GM Network

Category: Web3

Subcategory: AIoT

GM Network is a platform dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT), powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), aiming to foster the mass adoption of AIoT technologies. The platform is driven by a highly scalable layer 2 network, a decentralized identity module (GM ID), a data protocol (GM OS), an AIoT tools marketplace, and an application to connect IoT devices.

Hyperlane

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Interoperability

Hyperlane is an interoperability protocol designed to enable efficient and seamless communication between any blockchains. It functions as a toolkit for developers to deploy various modules, including network connections, token transfer routes, and user interface development. Hyperlane facilitates the deployment of cross-chain applications and supports a wide variety of Ethereum’s second layers and rollups.

Lagrange ZK Prover Network

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: ZK

Lagrange is an infrastructure based on a decentralized network of provers, allowing computations to be parallelized and distributed across multiple machines. This solution is aimed at decentralized applications that need access to reliable and integral data across multiple blockchains. Lagrange’s main product is the Zero Knowledge coprocessor, enabling off-chain intensive computations while generating lightweight cryptographic proofs.

Omni Network

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Interoperability

Omni Network is an interoperability protocol natively developed on Ethereum, designed to enable fast and secure communication between all rollups within the ecosystem. The network combines high security—enabled by Restaking—with an architecture optimized for low latency, connecting all second-layer solutions and their applications.

Opacity

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: ZK

Opacity is a protocol using Zero Knowledge Proof technology to enable the private and secure sharing and verification of user information without disclosing any personal data. Opacity is directly integrable into applications to manage information verification, such as purchase histories, loyalty points, bank balances, ownership of assets (e.g., a social media account, artwork, or code), or geolocation.

Open Layer

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Oracle

OpenLayer is a modular layer comparable to an oracle, designed to provide reliable data to on-chain and off-chain applications. Through various native protocols, including OpenOracle, OpenLayer offers a solution for collecting, validating, and transforming data, particularly from Web2 and Web3 users.

OpenLayer’s ambition is to use this data to serve decentralized applications, train artificial intelligence models, or build decentralized identity and reputation systems for users.

Witness Chain

Category: Web3

Subcategory: DePIN

Witness Chain is a protocol designed to be the security, coordination, and unification layer for DePIN networks. It aims to solve DePIN fragmentation by connecting them, enabling them to share reliable information about their physical locations or bandwidths and highlighting them in an open marketplace for applications that require their services.

Witness Chain seeks to create a shared economy of physical assets, facilitating the exchange of resources such as computing power, energy, and storage while strengthening the resilience and reliability of infrastructures through EigenLayer’s Restaking mechanism.

Xterio

Category: Web3

Subcategory: Gaming

Xterio is a game developer and publisher. The platform aims to be a hub connecting gamers and video game developers, leveraging blockchain features to offer unique functionalities and economic incentives. Dozens of video games are already available, allowing users to trade tokenized items on a marketplace and participate in new game launches.

eOracle

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Oracle

As its name suggests, eOracle is a decentralized oracle designed exclusively for the Ethereum blockchain. The protocol functions as a modular and programmable data layer, secured through EigenLayer, ensuring continuous connectivity with real-world and off-chain data.

eOracle’s ambition is to redefine how decentralized applications retrieve data by developing a fully decentralized, permissionless marketplace relying on neutral sources.

Aligned Layer (in development)

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: ZK

Aligned Layer is a platform aimed at integrating ZK technologies into the Ethereum ecosystem. The goal is to make cryptographic proof verification easier, faster, and cheaper without favoring a particular type of ZK.

Blockless (in development)

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Interoperability

Blockless is a platform enabling the development and deployment of "Network Neutral" applications (nnApps), meaning they are compatible with all blockchains without being dependent on any. Blockless’s infrastructure is compatible with multiple consensus mechanisms, programming languages, and security systems.

Caldera (in development)

Category: Rollup Services

Subcategory: Rollup-as-a-service

Caldera develops infrastructure to easily create EVM-compatible rollups, utilizing technologies such as Optimism’s OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, zkSync’s ZK Stack, and Polygon CDK. Developers can quickly design a rollup, customize it, and connect it seamlessly to the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Conduit (in development)

Category: Rollup Services

Subcategory: Rollup-as-a-service

Conduit is a platform designed to simplify the deployment, management, and development of rollups. The all-in-one interface allows users to create a rollup in just a few clicks using known technologies like Optimism’s OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, zkSync’s ZK Stack, or Polygon CDK, customize it, scale it, and manage it.

Espresso (in development)

Category: Blockchain Services

Subcategory: Sequencing

The Espresso network is a coordination layer for rollups and layer 2s, offering to improve their efficiency and thus provide a better user experience through a transaction and data ordering optimization mechanism. One of Espresso’s products is a marketplace where layer 2s can sell the right to sequence transactions on their network, maximizing revenue, security, and composability.

Fhenix (in development)

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: FHE

Fhenix is an Ethereum layer 2 network aimed at offering high-level privacy through Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology. Fhenix’s coprocessors enable full homomorphic encryption and support the associated computations, improving the efficiency of smart contract operations and strengthening the privacy of applications built on the network.

FluxLayer (in development)

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Interoperability

FluxLayer is a platform offering "Intent Liquidity as a Service" (ILaaS), providing an omni-chain liquidity layer to facilitate the movement of liquidity across different blockchains.

Polyhedra (in development)

Category: Infrastructure

Subcategory: Interoperability

Polyhedra is an interoperability solution aiming to connect isolated blockchains, leveraging ZK technology to verify state changes across different networks. The flagship product is zkBridge, an application that allows users to securely and quickly transfer tokens, NFTs, or even DeFi positions.

Radius (in development)

Category: Blockchain Services

Subcategory: Sequencing

Radius is a modular infrastructure for rollups and layer 2s, offering solutions for data and transaction ordering and sequencing, notably integrating ZK technology to optimize Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). The protocol relies on EigenLayer to decentralize the sequencer, improving the security and composability of second-layer networks.

Silence Laboratories (in development)

Category: Security and Privacy

Subcategory: MPC

Silence Laboratories develops and provides privacy solutions based on multiparty computation (MPC) technologies. The product is akin to MPC-as-a-Service, offering pre-designed libraries and tools for secure and decentralized key and signature generation.

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Conclusion: What to Remember?

In just a few months, EigenLayer’s AVS ecosystem has rapidly diversified, now encompassing more than thirty distributed networks. Unlike competing platforms, EigenLayer is not entirely permissionless (i.e., open to all protocols without barriers). Instead, the EigenLabs team carefully selects the AVS that will be integrated into the platform, tightly regulating the development of this ecosystem.

By allowing protocols to leverage Ethereum’s security, EigenLayer facilitates the development of new distributed networks (AVS) by removing the technical constraints and costs associated with setting up their own security layer. As a result, these protocols can focus fully on other aspects of their growth and innovation.

Of the 26 protocols listed in this analysis, 16 are already active, while 10 are still in development. We identified four main categories: security and privacy, infrastructure, rollup services, and Web3 applications. Here is a detailed breakdown of the protocols:

• Security and Privacy (5 active protocols, 3 in development): This category includes protocols developing tools for encrypted computation (ARPA Network), Zero Knowledge Proof technologies (Brevis Network, Lagrange, Opacity, Aligned Layer), Trusted Execution Environments (Automata), secure multiparty computation (Silence Laboratories), and fully homomorphic encryption (Fhenix). It’s interesting to note the diversity of cryptographic branches represented in this category.
• Infrastructure (5 active protocols, 3 in development): This category includes classic subcategories in the cryptocurrency industry, such as interoperability (DODOchain, Hyperlane, Omni Network, Blockless, FluxLayer, Polyhedra) and oracles (OpenLayer, eOracle). Interoperability is a major theme in the crypto ecosystem and is particularly relevant in EigenLayer’s AVS ecosystem.
• Rollup Services (3 active protocols, 4 in development): This category includes protocols developing tools or services for Ethereum rollup solutions. Notably, some AVS from other categories could also be classified here, especially concerning interoperability. EigenLayer primarily supports Rollup-as-a-Service solutions (AltLayer, Caldera, Conduit), data availability infrastructures (EigenDA)—a currently trending topic—as well as transaction sequencing and optimization services (Espresso, Radius).
• Web3 (4 active protocols): This category groups Web3 applications providing services for sectors such as gaming (Xterio), AIoT (GM Network), social networks (Cyber), or DePIN networks (Witness Chain).