After the upgrade of Ether 2.0, from the proof of arithmetic (POW) to proof of deposit (POS), the so-called Ether pledge, is to gather 32 ETH, and run the validator node to verify the Ether block, you can get the corresponding reward, and the current expectation of the return of 4% or so of the annualized.
Just as most retail investors in the A-share market can't afford to buy a handful of Maotai, most cryptocurrency leeks can't get together 32 ETH, which is why a series of service providers have emerged on behalf of the pledge.
For example, the stETH of LDO has been widely known, if we directly buy ETH for the pledge behavior is compared to the purchase of stocks, on behalf of the pledge is equivalent to the purchase of funds. There is also a special category of funds called FOFs, which in layman's terms is a fund that collects money from retail investors and then buys other people's funds.
LDO, the largest pledge provider, plays the role of a FOF in Ether Pledge. When you pledge your ETH through LDO, LDO will send you a note of stETH, and every time you gather 32 ETH from retail investors, LDO will choose a validator from the cooperating node operators and deposit the ETH to start validating and earning interest.
In addition to rewards there are also penalties, when a verified node tries to fork, submit a double signature, etc., it will be fined by the Slash mechanism. Most of the fines are due to node drops and unstable operation.
The stETH in your hand actually does not have any value, it is just an IOU issued to you by LDO, a centralized platform, similar to the share of the fund you subscribe to, and whether this share can be fully dealt with needs to rely on 3 conditions. 1:
LDO does not run away, not hacked
the verification node service provider does not run out of road, not hacked
the validation node is running normally and is not subject to large fines.
After explaining the Ethernet pledge, let's talk about the new nested product re-pledging:
EigenLayer has created a brand-new nesting doll repledging product, which uses the ETH that has been pledged on Ether as collateral to provide services for any product or project that requires "decentralized trust" and earns additional repledging revenue.
Products that require "decentralized trust". This sounds very abstract, the official document of EigenLayer says that the mechanism designed by it has a very wide range of usage scenarios, but in reality, the only real solution on the ground at present is a modified version of the OP Stack, that is, modifying the Data Availability Layer (DA) in the Layer2 of the traditional OP architecture, and handing over the responsibility of verifying the data to be submitted in the Layer2 to EigenDA.
Similar to Ether's native pledge, EigenLayer has its own reward and fine mechanism to ensure that all nodes operate in good faith, and at the same time provide "decentralized proof of trust" for potential blockchain services and facilities through the risk collateral of the "fine mechanism". Proof".
The revenue from the re-pledge is the service fee charged by EigenDA for the verification. The payers are the blockchain products and tools that need "decentralized trusted proof". At the root, it is the users who use these blockchain products built on EigenDA who pay an additional fee for the interaction.
If you deposit stETH into EigenLayer, the risks you need to take are also obvious:
the LDO does not run or get hacked
the validation node service provider does not run away or get hacked
Verify that the node is running normally and is not subject to large fines.
EigenLayer does not run, not hacked
EigenLayer Operator does not run away, not hacked
EigenDA is running normally without any large fines.
In addition, if no individual or project is willing to use the services provided by EigenDA, then the pledge is in fact no income, but need to pay the cost of node operation and maintenance.
