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Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer, and Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and CIO of Polychain Capital, an investor in EigenLayer, say that the developer ecosystem around EigenLayer is sprouting up very fast, which reminds Carlson-Wee of the developer excitement in Ethereum’s early days.

They discuss the potential of EigenLayer, which uses a restaking mechanism to allow ETH stakers to reallocate their staked ETH and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) to bolster security for other protocols. They cover how it could turbocharge Ethereum’s rollup scaling roadmap and enable Ethereum to become a stack of decentralized software as a service providers. Additionally, they discuss the potential risks associated with restaking as well as how EigenLayer could work with AI.

Read more: What Is EigenLayer? A Guide to the Decentralized ETH Restaking Protocol

Show highlights:

  • Sreeram’s explanation of what EigenLayer is and what it allows on Ethereum
  • why Polychain invested in EigenLayer’s seed round
  • why Sreeram believes that there are not just going to be three modules in blockchains, but thousands
  • the types of applications that can be built with actively validated services, according to Sreeram
  • why they both believe that EigenLayer will improve smart contracts
  • whether EigenLayer will help solve the liquidity fragmentation issue in Layer 2s
  • what Ethereum inclusion guarantees are and why they are important
  • the potential risks of EigenLayer and why Olaf doesn’t agree that EigenLayer results in rehypothecation
  • how attribution claims work in EigenLayer, allowing for “elastic scaling of security”
  • EigenLayer’s points program and the likelihood of a token
  • why Sreeram believes that an EigenLayer governance token wouldn’t have the same issues as Lido’s LDO
  • whether EigenLayer should be a core part of the Ethereum protocol itself
  • how AI and EigenLayer intersect and how to have permissionless innovation in the AI space

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Episode Transcript

Guest:

Links

EigenLayer

Points