EigenLayer Responds to Claims it Pressured Projects for Token Allocations

Eigen Labs, the team behind the leading restaking solution EigenLayer, responded to a CoinDesk article claiming that the EigenLayer team “pressured” other companies to distribute token allocations to Eigen Labs employees.

Eigen Labs’ blog post stated “We want to make clear that we have no knowledge or evidence of any employee at Eigen Labs pressuring any team to unduly benefit the Eigen Labs corporate entity or its employees”.

CoinDesk stated that each employee received 46,512 ALT from AltLayer, 10,490.0 ETHFI from Ether.Fi, and 66,667 REZ from Renzo, for a total of $126,666 per person at peak prices.

In the article, the author reported, “another team said it was sent a list of wallet addresses by Eigen Labs and felt pressured to pay up – or risk imperiling the relationship with a company that could make or break its business”.

‘No Coercion’

Eigen Labs acknowledged the airdrop allocations, but said that “to our knowledge, Eigen Labs was not treated differently and nor was there any coercion or preferential treatment from Eigen Labs to any of the teams”.

In the statement, Eigen Labs highlighted that the team updated its internal policies back in May, to avoid misaligned incentives. Per the new terms any projects distributing tokens to Eigen Labs must airdrop the allocations directly to the company itself.

Eigen Layer also created the Eigen Ecosystem Network in June, which enables companies to list their employees addresses so that any project that wishes to airdrop tokens can do so to companies on the list. This proposes an extra layer of transparency as opposed to employees and companies privately reporting an unverified list of wallets.