EigenLayer

The claims site, claims.eigenfoundation.org, opened on 10 May 2024 and the window closed on 7 September 2024. Eligibility covered people who had restaked ETH or liquid staking tokens directly on EigenLayer before 15 March 2024, and that group also got 100 bonus tokens. Phase 2, announced on 19 June 2024, went to users of liquid restaking protocols such as Kelp, Pendle and Equilibrium, with allocations set by each protocol and sybil screening by the foundation, plus the same 100-token bonus.

Total Season 1 distribution came to about 113 million EIGEN.

Season 1 tokens were claimable but not transferable. Reporting said the target for enabling transfers was September 2024, and holders could still stake and delegate them. That restriction drew criticism: recipients had tokens they could not sell, while insiders and investors faced a different schedule.

The foundation said Season 2 details would follow, and that 15% of the initial token supply was set aside for the community across all seasons, with Season 2 expected to allocate about 5%. We found no confirmed Season 2 claim mechanics in our sources.

A non-transferable airdrop is a way to keep early recipients aligned, but it also makes the value harder to assess. A token you cannot trade has a price on paper only.

The two-phase design shows how airdrops now reach users indirectly: Phase 2 paid users of other protocols, which lets EigenLayer reward people who never used it directly.

Looking back, the most important lesson of the Season 1 design is the gap between claiming and trading. People received tokens that they could stake and delegate but not sell for months, and in that time the market moved. Anyone who counts an airdrop as income should remember that its value is only real when the token becomes transferable, and a token that cannot be sold yet is a claim on a future price, not a payment.