Eigenlayer is financial engineering. Financial engineering is great for transferring risk from willing seller to willing buyers. BUT
The problem with financial engineering is it only works if there is a thriving economy underneath. What I always say is Wall Street exists because Main Street exists, not vice versa.
The dissonance with people's expectations from Eigenlayer, even in the most charitable interpretation, are that they think it is the killer primitive that will thrust Ethereum into mainstream adoption or something like that. Whereas, in reality, it is just another DeFi primitive (rehypothecation/leverage/credit say what you will) that has demand if and only if there is an organic economy underneath.
Blockchains have built good primitives: exchange, borrow/lend, perpetuals and now rehyp, but ecosystems still need to solve for their local economies i.e. real businesses.
Solana is clearly leading the charge in the DePIN ecosystem. Once people receive tokens for their contributions to DePIN networks, they have needs to exchange, borrow or leverage. So, what is Ethereum's answer for their local economy? And without economy, local currency isn't worth much , let alone ultrasound.
Also, if you disagreed with the above characterization (I don't know how one can), even then, the idea of desiring the security of a pristine collateral falls flat on surface with ultrasound money narrative collapsing. Why would people not use Bitcoin's security via other restaking protocols?
All in all, we need to be clear eyed about what is financial engineering and what is the real economy.
P.S. Financial engineering is good (I graduated myself in it). Just not a substitute for an organic economy.
The problem with financial engineering is it only works if there is a thriving economy underneath. What I always say is Wall Street exists because Main Street exists, not vice versa.
The dissonance with people's expectations from Eigenlayer, even in the most charitable interpretation, are that they think it is the killer primitive that will thrust Ethereum into mainstream adoption or something like that. Whereas, in reality, it is just another DeFi primitive (rehypothecation/leverage/credit say what you will) that has demand if and only if there is an organic economy underneath.
Blockchains have built good primitives: exchange, borrow/lend, perpetuals and now rehyp, but ecosystems still need to solve for their local economies i.e. real businesses.
Solana is clearly leading the charge in the DePIN ecosystem. Once people receive tokens for their contributions to DePIN networks, they have needs to exchange, borrow or leverage. So, what is Ethereum's answer for their local economy? And without economy, local currency isn't worth much , let alone ultrasound.
Also, if you disagreed with the above characterization (I don't know how one can), even then, the idea of desiring the security of a pristine collateral falls flat on surface with ultrasound money narrative collapsing. Why would people not use Bitcoin's security via other restaking protocols?
All in all, we need to be clear eyed about what is financial engineering and what is the real economy.
P.S. Financial engineering is good (I graduated myself in it). Just not a substitute for an organic economy.
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