The Ethereum Foundation has faced criticism after researcher Justin Drake announced his new adviser role with EigenFoundation, which offers substantial token incentives.
In a detailed post on social media recently, Drake revealed his compensation involves a significant number of EIGEN tokens vested over three years, valued at millions and surpassing his total assets.
The Eigen Foundation is behind the development of EigenLayer, a protocol launched partially on the mainnet last month. The protocol enables users to stake liquid Ether (ETH) tokens like wETH, essentially allowing Ethereum’s ETH to be staked twice.
Drake noted his advisory role would focus on researching restaking risks, while maintaining a critical stance towards EigenLayer to mitigate potential conflicts of interest.
Drake explained his involvement aimed to avoid past mistakes made with liquid staking, stating,
“By being an adviser, I hope to have a front-row seat to restaking issues and steer EigenLayer from within,”
Drake wrote.
“I feel I did too little, too late with regard to liquid staking. This is an opportunity not to repeat the mistake with restaking.”
Drake’s post comes in response to a query by crypto trader Jordan Fish, known as “Cobie”, to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin about Ethereum Foundation staff accepting substantial monetary packages from projects potentially conflicting with Ethereum’s interests, citing EigenLayer as an example.
Despite the criticism, some industry figures, including Polygon’s vice president of governance Hudson Jameson and zkSecurity co-founder David Wong, commended Drake’s transparency.
“This is some next level transparency. You have to love the EF people for their integrity, really. I don’t know if we deserve these people”,
In his post, Drake also attempted to dispel concerns about EigenLayer’s influence over the Ethereum Foundation, clarifying that only a small fraction of the foundation’s 300+ staff had ties to EigenLayer.
He wrote,
“To my knowledge 3 EFers have a formal relationship with EigenLayer entities: one as an early EigenLabs investor, and two as recent EigenFoundation advisors.”
He emphasized his willingness to terminate the advisership if EigenLayer’s direction conflicted with Ethereum’s interests.
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