EigenLayer airdropEIGEN

What qualified participants did

1. Restaked ETH or LSTs, or held liquid restaking tokens, before the Season 1 snapshot.
2. Staked or operated nodes during the Season 2 measurement period, which ran from March 15 to August 15, 2024.
3. Completed social verification for the community group before the verification deadline.
4. Claimed on claims.eigenfoundation.org during the claim window (now closed).
5. Today: do not connect a wallet to any site that promises a new EIGEN claim; none is announced in the official pages we reviewed.

Where things stand

EIGEN is the token of the EigenLayer restaking protocol, whose public brand has since moved to EigenCloud. The airdrop, which the Eigen Foundation called a stakedrop, was split into two seasons. Season 1 was announced as five percent of the initial token supply for restakers, and its Phase 1 claims opened on May 10, 2024 for a 120-day window. Phase 2, for users with more complex liquid restaking interactions, closed on September 7, 2024. Season 2 followed with claims from September 16, 2024 to March 16, 2025.

Both windows have passed. In the Foundation pages we opened, we found no announcement of a Season 3 or any other open claim, so the status here is ended. The Season 1 announcement said unclaimed tokens would move to future seasons, but we did not find a published rule on what became of unclaimed Season 2 tokens, and we are not assuming one.

Anyone offering an EIGEN claim today should be treated with suspicion. The Foundation itself warned, in its original announcement, to verify news only through its own website and X account.

How eligibility worked

Season 1 rewarded restakers. The snapshot was taken on March 15, 2024. Phase 1, about 90 percent of the season, covered restakers and holders of liquid restaking tokens with simpler interactions, and the amount depended on how much was staked, for how long, how early the user started, and whether they kept the position. Direct native restakers received more, a 10 EIGEN minimum applied in Phase 1, and no single liquid staking token, restaking token, user or entity could receive more than 33 percent. Phase 2 used lists submitted by the restaking-token teams.

Season 2 measured activity from March 15 to August 15, 2024, in ETH-hours, with the snapshot on August 15. It had three groups: stakers and operators (about 70 million EIGEN), ecosystem partners such as AVSs, restaking-token projects and rollup providers (about 11 million), and community members (about 6 million). Community members first had to complete social verification at verify.eigenfoundation.org, with a deadline of September 13, 2024. Users who went through a liquid restaking protocol claimed through that protocol.

On Sybil resistance, the Season 1 post states that allocation was linear, so splitting funds across many wallets did not increase the total. Core contributors of Eigen Labs and the Foundation were excluded, and the Foundation warned that creating or trading derivatives of non-transferable EIGEN could affect future eligibility.

• Season 1: restaking position at the March 15, 2024 snapshot.
• Season 2: ETH-hours staked between March 15 and August 15, 2024, plus partner and community groups.
• Linear allocation made multi-wallet splitting pointless for the main groups.

What participants did and the risks that remain

Participants who held restaked positions connected a wallet to claims.eigenfoundation.org, and community members completed verification first. Operators were told to wait for separate instructions before connecting an operator wallet, which is a good reminder that a legitimate project tells you exactly when and where to act.

The security lessons are direct. Check that the claim domain matches the one in the official Foundation documentation, bookmark it instead of following links from messages, and never enter a seed phrase. Because the claim windows have ended, a page asking for a signature to receive EIGEN now is more likely to be a drainer than a late distribution.

What to take from this drop

EigenLayer shows a staged retroactive distribution: a first season rewarding early capital commitment, and a second that widened the group to operators, ecosystem partners and community contributors, with an explicit verification step for the latter. The criteria rewarded duration and early participation, not just size, though large holders were also capped at the group level.

For future restaking or infrastructure airdrops, the observable pattern is that projects publish a snapshot date, a claim site and a deadline in advance, and that the timeline is fixed and short. Waiting for a "second chance" after the deadline is not a plan.

This page is informational and is not financial advice.