Eigenlayer introduces a new mechanism for EIGEN to support a complementary staking model between ETH and EIGEN

According to the white paper released by Eigenlayer on GitHub, unlike common governance tokens, EIGEN is positioned as a universal and verifiable "work token". The so-called "work token" refers to those utility tokens that can be staked by participants to perform certain work (such as blockchain verification). If the participants violate the specific work commitment, the "work tokens" staked by them may be punished by slashing. In the context of EIGEN, EIGEN staking is intended to provide a functional supplement to ETH re-staking. It introduces a new mechanism to deal with subjective "errors", such as behaviors that cannot be identified on the chain but still need to be punished. In other words, Eigenlayer will support a complementary staking model between ETH and EIGEN. ETH staking is mainly used to solve objective consensus problems, and EIGEN staking is mainly used to solve subjective economic benefit-related problems. Through the staking of EIGEN, EigenLayer can ensure the maintenance of full-scale verification capabilities without forking the Ethereum mainnet consensus, and is expected to unlock a series of active verification services (AVS) with strong economic security that were previously impossible to achieve, such as activating new innovations in oracles, DA, databases, AI, game virtual machines, intent and order matching, MEV engines, prediction markets, and many other aspects.