The EigenLayer Foundation recently announced a new rewards program that will benefit stakers and operators who secure Actively Validated Services (AVS). This program is part of the Ethereum restaking protocol and will offer 4% of the total supply of EigenLayer (EIGEN) tokens.
EigenLayer connects various restaking protocols, and stakers and operators play a crucial role in securing AVSs by restaking their ETH. In return for their efforts, they will receive staking rewards. This initiative marks the first time that stakers and node operators will receive token-based rewards directly from AVSs through the EigenLayer protocol.
The rewards will be distributed through a “rewards boost” program as part of the new EIGEN programmatic incentives program. Stakers and operators will receive rewards in proportion to the distribution of AVSs they support. Essentially, the more AVSs a participant supports, the more tokens they will receive from the EigenLayer Foundation.
The main goal of this design is to incentivize AVSs to start distributing rewards early to stakers and operators. This will allow them to benefit from and secure a larger share of the early EIGEN programmatic incentives. Even AVSs that may not have the capacity to distribute rewards initially will be supported by EigenLayer. Stakers and operators who support these AVSs will still receive small distributions of EIGEN tokens.
To ensure that all genuine AVSs have the opportunity to allocate rewards to their stakers and operators, there will be a ‘rewards floor’ available outside of the main rewards boost. This strategy is intended to encourage new actively validated services to join the EigenLayer ecosystem.
The AVS rewards program is set to launch in the coming weeks, while the programmatic incentives are scheduled to roll out in the coming months. Since its launch on the mainnet in June last year, EigenLayer has witnessed over 4.8 million ETH and more than 108 million EIGEN tokens being restaked. Currently, there are 16 launched AVSs and over 300 operators actively participating in the ecosystem.