a16z crypto invests $70 million in direct EigenLayer token deal to back EigenCloud developer platform rollout

The blockchain-focused arm of Andreessen Horowitz, a16z crypto, has purchased an additional $70 million worth of EigenLayer's EIGEN tokens to help support the launch of the Ethereum restaking project's new developer platform, EigenCloud.

a16z crypto previously led a $100 million Series B round for EigenLayer core developer Eigen Labs, announced in February 2024. Eigen Labs had earlier  closed a $50 million Series A funding round in March 2023, led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and other investors.

"EigenLayer is surmounting the technical bottlenecks of blockchains to enable a new category of applications built on verifiable solutions," a16z crypto General Partner Ali Yahya said in a statement shared with The Block. "We are thrilled to expand our investment in the project."

Launched on Tuesday after nearly a year of research and development, EigenCloud combines core services, such as EigenDA for data, EigenVerify for dispute resolution, and EigenCompute for execution into a unified, programmable environment. Built on EigenLayer and powered by the EIGEN token, the platform enables developers to build trustless web2 applications with blockchain-grade verifiability, the team explained.

More specifically, EigenCloud uses EigenLayer's crypto-economic security to extend verifiability to sectors such as AI, healthcare, and media, allowing offchain computation with onchain trust guarantees.

"EigenCloud will enable the next generation of disruptive, mass-market crypto apps, closing the gap between what developers want to build onchain and what blockchains allow them to build," Eigen Labs CEO Sreeram Kannan said. "EigenCloud expands the programmability of crypto and makes virtually anything verifiable onchain. It opens up the opportunity for developers to build highly ambitious products like disintermediated digital marketplaces, onchain insurance, fully onchain games, automated adjudication, powerful prediction markets, and verifiable AI."

The EIGEN token powers EigenCloud's offchain programmability while ensuring full verifiability. Stakers may benefit from future usage-based fees that support staking rewards and ecosystem growth, the team said.

"We're entering a new era where verifiability is becoming a foundational building block of the internet, and EigenCloud is a bold step in that direction," Joe Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, CEO of Consensys, and Chairman of SharpLink, noted. "By bringing verifiability into the cloud-native developer experience, Sreeram and Eigen Labs have been best-in-class leaders in expanding what's possible on Ethereum and advancing the infrastructure for more trustworthy digital systems. At Consensys, we believe Ethereum is the foundation for the next-generation internet — and for a new world economy — one that is decentralized, programmable, and built for global trust. Eigen's work helps bring that vision closer to reality."

Eigen Labs is releasing the alpha version of EigenCloud this week, including major upgrades to EigenDA and a preview of EigenVerify — which enables slashing via EIGEN token forkability. The team also shared a roadmap with new developer tools, expanded dispute options, and the upcoming EigenCompute primitive to simplify AVS deployment. Developer access will roll out in stages over the coming months.

'Unlocking crypto's endgame'

EigenLayer lets users re-stake ETH, including through liquid staking tokens, to secure third-party networks and actively validated services. The project's shared security layer reallocates staked ETH across multiple services beyond Ethereum.

"Bitcoin disrupted money, and Ethereum made it programmable for the first app developers, but we believe crypto is just getting started, and the next era of application innovation will come when crypto's verifiability is programmable for any developer building any application in any industry," the team said, describing this process as "unlocking crypto's endgame."

With over 200 AVSs in development, EigenLayer claims to be crypto's fastest-growing developer ecosystem. These services secure $2 billion in application value using $12 billion in restaked assets and have collectively raised over $500 million to build rollups, oracles, offchain middleware, and AI verification tools — momentum EigenCloud aims to accelerate.

EigenLayer has a total value locked of around $11.7 billion, according to DeFiLlama data — down from a peak of over $20 billion in June 2024. EIGEN tokens are currently trading for $1.16 at a market cap of $357.3 million and a fully diluted value of $2 billion, according to The Block's EigenLayer price page — down 79.5% from an all-time high of $5.65 in December.

Last week, a16z crypto led a  $33 million seed round for Yupp — a platform that enables users to compare answers from top AI models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, and Llama, using onchain incentives.