Andreessen Horowitz Invests in EigenLayer
Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency division, a16z crypto, has invested an additional $70 million to purchase EIGEN tokens from the Ethereum re-staking protocol EigenLayer, aiming to accelerate the promotion and commercialization of the project’s new development platform, EigenCloud. a16z crypto general partner Ali Yahya stated that this investment comes with a lock-up period.
a16z crypto previously led a $100 million Series B financing round for EigenLayer’s core development team, Eigen Labs. Earlier, Eigen Labs completed a $50 million Series A financing round in March 2023, led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Polychain Capital.
After nearly a year of research and development, EigenCloud officially launched on Tuesday, integrating core services such as data availability service EigenDA, dispute resolution service EigenVerify, and execution service EigenCompute into a unified and programmable environment. The team explained that the platform is built on EigenLayer and powered by the EIGEN token, enabling developers to create trustless Web2 applications with blockchain-level verifiability.
Specifically, EigenCloud leverages the cryptoeconomic security of EigenLayer to extend verifiability into fields such as AI, healthcare, and media, allowing off-chain computations to be conducted with on-chain trust guarantees. Eigen Labs CEO Sreeram Kannan stated:
“The EIGEN token supports the off-chain programmability of EigenCloud while ensuring full verifiability.” The team indicated that stakers might benefit from fees generated by the platform’s usage in the future.
This week, Eigen Labs will release the alpha version of EigenCloud, featuring significant upgrades to EigenDA and a preview of EigenVerify, which can implement penalty mechanisms through the forkability of EIGEN tokens.
According to data from CoinGecko, the price of EIGEN has dropped approximately 26% over the past week, with a trading price of around $1.20 at the time of publication.
Related reports: “EigenLayer Insiders Violate Lock-Up Period and Sell Tokens! Official Statement: Investigation Underway” “Analysis of Re-Staking Leader: Business Logic and Valuation Derivation of EigenLayer”
