EigenLayer Is Now Feature Complete.
PLUS: Slashing deep dive, An intro to Stablecoins, and so much more.
This week, something profound happened in web3 infrastructure - and it didn’t involve airdrops, meme coins, or Layer 3s with vaporware decks.
EigenLayer, the backbone of Ethereum’s restaking ecosystem, shipped the feature that completes its original vision: programmable slashing.
It’s the final piece of the puzzle. With the release of ELIP-002, EigenLayer gives protocols not just the ability to reward honest behavior, but to punish dishonesty in specific, scoped, crypto economically secure ways. Slashing isn’t just a stick. It’s a social contract. A promise made enforceable by code. A way to scale trust without scaling human coordination.
And it’s not just theoretical. Over 190 AVSs - 40 of which are on mainnet - 80K+ stakers, 2,000+ operators powering the network. We’ll dive into a few examples below, but in the months ahead, you’ll see decentralized RPC providers, data availability services, zero-knowledge proof generators, and even omni-chain bridges opt in to operator sets and unique stake allocations - carving out programmable jurisdictions for reliability, uptime, and correct computation.
The age of credible commitments is here. Not via law. Not via norms. But via slashing conditions bound to delegated stake, enforced by protocol logic, and composable across an open coordination mesh.
This might be a lot to digest - but it might be the most important upgrade you'll encounter all week. It’s a major day for one of the hottest companies in the Ethereum ecosystem - and a pivotal milestone for the future of programmable trust.
Disclosure: This issue is published in collaboration with EigenLayer.
Let’s get into it 👇
What is EigenLayer?
At its core, EigenLayer is a marketplace for shared security. It doesn’t reinvent staking - it redeploys it.
Normally, when you stake ETH, you’re securing Ethereum. That’s it. But EigenLayer introduces restaking - a system where that same ETH can also secure other decentralized services: rollups, bridges, oracles, AI inference markets, and more. No new tokens. No separate validator sets. Just more utility from the same security.
The services that plug into EigenLayer are called AVSs - Autonomous Verifiable Services. Each one can rent security from the shared restaking pool, tap into existing operators (Anyone can become one, as long as they opt into an AVS’s conditions and agree to uphold them), and build modularly on top of Ethereum’s trust layer.
Until now, AVSs could only reward good behavior from operators and punish bad behavior with limited tools. But with ELIP-002, they can now punish bad behavior expressively with slashing.
So What Is Slashing, Exactly?
Slashing is when an operator breaks the rules they agreed to, and their staked ETH gets burned.
What’s powerful here is that each AVS defines its own rules:
Technical: “Submit valid ZK proofs or get slashed.”
Behavioral: “Don’t go offline for more than 6 hours.”
Economic: “Meet uptime guarantees or lose 5% of stake.”
AVSs also control:
How much to slash
Whether to include veto periods or fraud proofs
When and why slashing can be triggered
It’s not a monolith. It’s a jurisdictional slashing mesh, opt-in by all participants, enforced by protocol logic, and composable across the restaking ecosystem.
As Matt Nelson of EigenLayer explains:
“This is a toolkit for programmable trust. It’s not about forcing consensus - it’s about enabling communities to build their own credible commitments.”
That’s the beauty here. A zk-rollup verifying proofs every 10 blocks can define its own penalties. A cross-chain bridge validating ownership transfers can slash based on misreports. A DePIN network streaming data from IoT sensors can punish latency or data corruption.
The New Primitives: Operator Sets & Unique Stake
To make programmable slashing real, EigenLayer introduced two core building blocks:
1. Operator Sets: Custom Validator Pools
Each AVS defines its own group of operators — aka Operator Sets — who are responsible for carrying out specific tasks defined by the AVS, not just meeting general uptime metrics.
Here’s what an AVS might ask of its operators:
Attest: Verify, store, and sign off on data (e.g. ZK proofs, blobs, cross-chain messages).
Store: Keep the signed data available for a defined period (e.g. 14 days).
Serve: Respond to retrieval requests quickly and reliably.
Maintain uptime: Meet performance targets based on stake weight.
Act within bounds: Respect the opt-in logic, exit lifecycle, and SLA thresholds per quorum.
Operators are accountable on a per-quorum basis, meaning an operator may perform differently across AVSs — and be rewarded or penalized accordingly.
This design gives protocols fine-grained control over their logic — without needing to launch their own chain or fork Ethereum consensus.
2. Unique Stake: Isolated, AVS-Specific Security
Before this release, operators reused the same restaked ETH across every AVS. That created contagion risk - one misbehaving AVS could slash stake meant for something else.
Now, with Unique Stake, operators can segment their delegated ETH across different AVSs. Each allocation is opt-in and has the option to be isolated and only slashable by the protocol it’s committed to.
This is the breakthrough: AVS-level accountability without global risk.
For Developers: Security, Without the Bloat
If you’re building at the frontier - whether it’s a rollup, ZK prover, oracle, AI co-pilot, or data pipeline - the EigenLayer slashing upgrade is a massive unlock.
EigenLayer’s slashing upgrade gives builders plug-and-play access to Ethereum-grade security - without needing to launch a chain, create a token, or manage validators. You can spin up an AVS, define your own Operator Set, write custom slashing rules, and enforce performance with real skin in the game.
This unlocks powerful new possibilities. For example, reputation-weighted routing is now viable. Imagine a rollup choosing which RPC node or proof generator to use, based on slashing history and uptime data, all stored onchain. Operators aren’t just anonymous endpoints anymore - they’re composable trust assets.
Risk-adjusted staking becomes possible too. AVSs can tune reward curves based on historical performance, or offer higher yields for harder tasks with tighter slashing windows. The better your infra, the more you earn - and the more you stake, the more you have to lose.
This creates a powerful incentive flywheel. Over time, operator marketplaces emerge - where AVSs compete for high-quality, high-reputation nodes, and nodes specialize in particular AVS workloads. Think of it as a restaking-native version of what Akash or Render promise, but with enforcement baked into Ethereum’s economic base layer.
And finally, governance itself becomes programmable infrastructure. AVSs can plug in veto committees, fraud proof layers, or appeals processes - defining not just what gets slashed, but how disagreements get resolved. As Matt from EigenLayer put it, “This isn’t just code - it’s a toolkit for building new social contracts.”
Or as College DAO puts it: the next Eigengames is about to be on a different level ;)
The Stablecoin Surge
Scroll crypto‑Twitter for five minutes and you’ll trip over a dozen hot takes - AI agents, the next meme‑coin, Infra wars. But beneath all the noise, one quiet constant keeps threading its way back into every conversation: dollars on‑chain.
Stablecoins have become the oxygen of the ecosystem - ever‑present, quietly essential, and suddenly central to the narrative. With new players like Cap raising $11 million and Codex raising $16M+ to build a blockchain just for stablecoins, the race is on for a trillion‑dollar prize. This isn’t a niche use case anymore. It’s infrastructure.
So why the spotlight? Because dollars that live on public ledgers behave nothing like the ones in your bank account. They feel more like 19th‑century bearer notes—something you can hand off, swap, or stake with zero permission friction. You don’t need a custodian. You don’t need an intermediary. You just need a wallet.
Where’s this all coming from? The big unlock: stablecoins unbundle trust.
In TradFi, you outsource risk to a regulated institution and hope the FDIC keeps the score. On‑chain, risk is transparent and composable. You choose your flavor of safety. You pick your exposure. You decide what your dollar should do.
And that shift is already bleeding into the edges of real commerce—creator payouts that clear before the chorus finishes, global payroll that settles in seconds, apps that hide gas behind smart UX so Grandma just sees “Send $5.”
So next time someone asks, “Why do we need crypto again?”
Answer in plain English: Because it lets money behave like software—upgradeable, composable, and finally under your control.
Want the full deep-dive? Here’s a killer resource pack from a16z that maps out the stablecoin design space:
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🛰️ Eigen Summer Fellowship Just Landed
EigenLayer has officially launched its Summer Fellowship program - an 8-week, in-person experience designed for ambitious builders at the frontier of crypto infrastructure.
Fellows will work alongside the Eigen team to prototype agent-powered apps, experiment with AVS tooling, and contribute to the growing restaking ecosystem.
-Seattle (on-site)
- 8 weeks | Summer 2025
- $5,000/month + housing + meals
- Mentorship from Eigen core contributors including @sreeramkannan and @dabit3
With fast build cycles, weekly demos, and potential pathways to full-time roles, this fellowship is designed for those ready to move quickly and build with purpose.
Cornell Tech Crypto Conference - April 25th
Cornell's "New Era of U.S. Innovation in Crypto" Conference is coming to NYC on April 25th. The lineup features notable speakers from Visa, MoonPay, Fireblocks, and Ava Labs, along with regulatory perspectives from NYDFS.
Panel topics include DeFi developments, Crypto-AI integration, stablecoin competition, and comparative blockchain architectures. The event concludes with the Cornell Blockchain Accelerator Demo Day.
Early Bird tickets available until April 4th: $10 for students, $50 general admission.
Yale Blockchain Conference - April 4th
You thought we were done after one Ivy? Think again. We’re heading to Yale to explore how blockchain is reshaping industries - from finance and infrastructure to art, AI, and beyond.
Hear from speakers at Paradigm, a16z crypto, Microsoft, BitGo, Galaxy, Movement Labs, the Whitney Museum, and more as we dive into the theme:
“Blockchain Applications Across Industries.”
Panel topics include decentralized infrastructure, institutional adoption, cultural innovation, and the next wave of crypto-native products.
CollegeDAO members receive an exclusive discount - use promo code COLLEGEDAO for student tickets.
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🐰 One Last Hop Before You Log Off
Here’s something fun to round out the week — and maybe procrastinate just a little longer:
Crossy Fluffle is a real-time onchain game from the team at MegaETH, where every hop is a transaction… and every mistake is permanent.
You’ve got 60 seconds.
Max 2 pending txs.
Get hit while waiting on confirmation? Fluffle goes flat.
Each run will end with a shareable card so you can flex your score and the network you achieved it on. It’s a deceptively simple demo that makes you feel the difference latency makes.
Try it yourself after finals — and don’t rage quit:
We’ll see you next week 🌀