Expert on Ethereum Justin Drake claims that the worth of his EigenLayer position is “millions of dollars.” Some think this could alter the incentives that blockchain engineers receive.
The foundation behind EigenLayer hired a researcher from the Ethereum Foundation as a paid adviser. Social media users are criticizing this choice. A commenter proposed that this would lead to “conflicted incentives.”
Ethereum researcher Justin Drake revealed a new advisor position at EigenFoundation in a lengthy May 19 X post. He said there is an important EIGEN token incentive for the role. This incentive has a three-year vesting period and a million-dollar value. Drake mentioned that it exceeds the total worth of all his other possessions.
A protocol called EigenLayer made a partial mainnet debut last month. Users can stake tokens of liquid Ether (ETH). These tokens, staked in protocols such as Lido, are ETH variants, making it possible to stake ETH twice.
Drake claimed he had a condition on accepting the role. He can only look into the dangers of restocking.
Drake stated:
“By being an adviser, I hope to have a front-row seat to restaking issues and steer EigenLayer from within”.
“I feel I did too little, too late with regard to liquid staking. This is an opportunity not to repeat the mistake with restaking.”
Vitalik Buterin sought his opinion by co-hosting UpOnly and cryptocurrency dealer Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie, one day prior. About employees of the Ethereum Foundation “taking life-changing [monetary] packages” from projects, he asked questions. Sing EigenLayer as a hypothetical example, Cobie stated that these incentives “may have conflicted incentives with Ethereum.”
Yet, other people applauded Drake for being open and honest. Among them is Huson James, vice president of governance at Polygon. David Wong, a co-founder of zkSecurity, also gave him compliments. Drake was also commended by Robbie Nakarmi, director of Standard Chartered Ventures’ crypto investments.
Drake attempted to refute allegations about EigenLayer in his X post. He responded to charges that EigenLayer is “attempting to ‘corrupt’ or ‘bribe’ the Ethereum Foundation systematically.”
“The EF is a large organization with 300+ people,” he penned “To my knowledge 3 EFers have a formal relationship with EigenLayer entities: one as an early EigenLabs investor, and two as recent EigenFoundation advisors.”
He went on to say that he didn’t “see the 1% of EFers formally involved with EigenLayer compromising their morals.” according to Drake, he might “end the advisership at any time.” this is what would occur if EigenLayer took a step that was “against Ethereum’s interests.”
EigenLayer granted customers an extra 28 million EIGEN tokens in an airdrop earlier in May. Users who felt that the program was too restricted reacted negatively to this.
