EigenCloud

EIGEN is used as an economic security asset for services operating through EigenLayer and EigenCloud.

• Economic Security: EIGEN can be staked and allocated to services that require economic backing for activities such as off-chain computation, verification, data availability and other infrastructure functions.

• Pooled Security: EigenLayer allows multiple services to draw security from a shared pool of staked and restaked assets rather than relying only on their own native tokens. This allows operators and stakers to provide economic security across different services within the ecosystem.

• Operator Participation: EIGEN holders can stake their tokens and delegate them to operators that perform work for supported services. Operators can allocate stake to specific services or Operator Sets and may receive rewards for meeting the conditions defined by those services.

• Marketplace for Security: Services can compete for economic security by defining rewards, participation requirements and slashing conditions. Operators and stakers can choose which services to support based on their respective requirements, rewards and risks.

• Slashing and Accountability: Services can define conditions that participating operators must follow. Where slashing is enabled, allocated stake can be penalised when operators fail to meet predefined requirements, creating an economic cost for incorrect behaviour.

• Intersubjective Security: EIGEN is designed to support services where some faults cannot be proved entirely through on-chain computation. Its intersubjective security model provides a mechanism for addressing behaviour that participants can broadly identify as incorrect without requiring a fork of Ethereum.

Stakers and operators can also receive EIGEN rewards for participating in eligible services, linking token incentives to the provision of infrastructure and economic security across the ecosystem.

EigenCloud and the technology behind the EIGEN token were developed by Eigen Labs. Eigen Labs was founded by Sreeram Kannan, who serves as its Founder and CEO. Kannan previously worked as a professor at the University of Washington and led the university's blockchain research laboratory.

Eigen Labs originally developed EigenLayer, with its restaking functionality launching on Ethereum mainnet in 2023. The EIGEN token was introduced in 2024 and was designed to extend EigenLayer's economic security model beyond the use of restaked ETH.

The Eigen Foundation was established as an independent organisation supporting the EigenLayer ecosystem and is involved in activities related to the EIGEN token and ecosystem development.

Eigen Labs launched EigenCloud in June 2025 as a platform built on top of EigenLayer, combining EigenLayer's staking infrastructure with EigenDA, EigenVerify, EigenCompute and third-party Autonomous Verifiable Services. EIGEN provides part of the economic security used by services operating through this infrastructure.