EigenLayer has reassured its community about the security of its platform after a recent breach resulted in the theft of $5.5 million worth of EIGEN tokens from an investor. This incident coincided with criticism of EigenLayer's transparency regarding token staking and followed the listing of its tokens on major exchanges.
On October 4, EigenLayer revealed that an investor's email thread was compromised, leading to the theft of 1,673,645 EIGEN tokens. The attacker intercepted the email communication, prompting the investor to send tokens to the wrong address. The stolen tokens were quickly sold on decentralized exchanges, converted into stablecoins, and moved to centralized exchanges to obscure the trail.
EigenLayer, working with exchanges and law enforcement, has frozen a portion of the stolen funds. The platform clarified that the breach was due to compromised email communication, not related to its smart contract or protocol security. Further investigations are ongoing to ensure no vulnerabilities exist in the protocol or token contracts.
Despite bolstering security measures, scrutiny has arisen over EigenLayer's token lockup policies. Critics noted that EigenLayer doesn't employ the typical one-year lockup period commonly used by token issuers, raising concerns about unauthorized transactions from large token holders.
Currently, EigenLayer's policy restricts early investors and team members from selling or staking EIGEN tokens until 2025, with a gradual unlock until 2027. As one of the top three DeFi platforms, EigenLayer boasts over $10 billion in total value locked and reached a market cap of over $7 billion.
