EigenCloud, formerly known as EigenLayer, was founded in 2021 by Sreeram Kannan. Eigen is the German word for “own,” and Kannan has stated that EigenLayer was founded to provide users “your own layer” and “developers with access to the Ethereum staked capital base and decentralized validator set.”

Below is a timeline of key protocol developments:

• On Feb. 20, 2023, the project team released its protocol whitepaper and launched its forum.
• On April 6, 2023, the project team announced the release of its Stage 1 Testnet on Ethereum Goerli for restaking native staked ETH (called “native restaking”) and restaking supported liquid staking tokens (LSTs) (called “liquid restaking”).
• On June 14, 2023, EigenLayer’s Stage 1 Mainnet launched with the deployment of its restaking contracts on Ethereum mainnet.
  • Notably, both native restaking and liquid restaking first launched with deposit caps set by and made at the project team’s discretion. Native restaking was subsequently uncapped, and LST deposit caps were increased several times before being removed on April 16, 2024.
• On Nov. 16, 2023, the project team announced the release of its Stage 2 Testnet on Ethereum Goerli, allowing (i) operators to register for the network to begin validating for the first AVS, EigenDA, and (ii) restakers to delegate stake to operators.
• On Dec. 15, 2023, the project team announced it had open-sourced its fork of the OP Stack with EigenDA support. On Dec. 20, 2023, the team introduced restaked rollups as a new category of EigenLayer AVS services.
• On Feb. 2, 2024, the project team announced EigenDA support rollups built with Arbitrum Orbit.
• On March 26, 2024, the project team announced it had launched the EigenLayer and EigenDA Holesky Testnet, which introduced Dual Quorum, allowing operators to support validation services through both supported LSTs or native ETH and an additional token (called Dual Staking).
• On April 9, 2024, the project team launched additional functionality on Ethereum mainnet (Stage 2) beyond restaking native ETH or supported LSTs, including the ability to (i) delegate stake to an operator, (ii) register as an operator with EigenLayer and opt to run AVSs, and (iii) register as an AVS with the protocol (starting with EigenDA in beta).
  • Notably, the introduction of this additional functionality did not include in-protocol payments from AVSs to operators or introduce slashing. The announcement stated, “We are allowing the EigenLayer marketplace to develop and stabilize before introducing in-protocol payments and slashing to mainnet later this year.”
• On April 11, 2024, the project team announced the AVS mainnet launch (Stage 3), onboarding six additional AVSs besides EigenDA to EigenLayer.
• On April 29, 2024, the project team introduced the EIGEN token and the intersubjective agreement mechanism that uses the EIGEN token, or, in theory, any other intersubjective token.
• On May 10, 2024, ERC-20 EIGEN became claimable; however, it is non-transferable during its “initial phase,” after which “transferability will be enabled.” A blog post from May 10, 2024, states this functionality is intended to be introduced by Sept. 30, 2024.

As of July 2026, EigenCloud is primarily positioned as an integrated infrastructure platform for verifiable applications and autonomous AI agents. Its principal components include:

• EigenLayer, the underlying staking, operator, rewards and slashing system used to create economic commitments and consequences.
• EigenDA, the platform’s high-throughput data availability service.
• EigenCompute, a confidential and verifiable container-execution environment for applications and agents.
• EigenAI, a deterministic inference service designed to make model execution reproducible and auditable.
• AgentKit, a development framework for agents with persistent identity, encrypted state, wallets, payments and verifiable execution.

EigenCloud’s strategic evolution can therefore be understood as an expansion of EigenLayer’s original restaking thesis. EigenLayer initially enabled blockchain services to borrow Ethereum’s economic security. EigenCloud applies the same broader principle—replacing trust in an operator with independently verifiable commitments—to cloud applications and AI agents. Restaking, operator rewards and slashing remain the economic foundation, while EigenCompute, EigenAI, EigenDA and AgentKit provide the application-facing infrastructure through which those guarantees can be used.