EigenLayer has been the topic of many conversations as it aims to bring the security of the Blockchain to outside of the Blockchain. Though how does that impact your business, your projects and what even is an AVS?
How does EigenLayer AVS work in practice, an example from society.
Take some cops that run patrol in your area. They verify security and check that everything is in order. If they misbehave they get penalized (loose their job, less pay, ...).
Imagine you have young kids and they play outside. You take the patrol and tell them "hey my kids will be outside today, if you make sure they are save while you're on patrol I'll pay you extra". Now what you have just done is added incentive for the police to look out for your kids. You make them verify the property that your kids are safe. To make sure they don't misbehave the police gives you 100$ as a security deposit. If they don't verify the rules, they lose some of that 100$. If they verify the rules correctly you pay them.
We have just created and actively validated service (AVS). The police checking on your kids safety. And that safety we can't comprehend by math or smart contracts, we can though by a bunch of humans looking at it and saying "yeah that checks out".
This is called "intersubjective agreement" and our AVS, the deal with the police, verifies that agreement of our need. Namely our kids being safe when outside.
Now digitally we can not leverage police security, but Ethereum.
Why do we want to leverage Ethereum security?
Why we want that is, because billions of dollars secure Ethereum as of writing so if we can get any of that money to be backing our system, then we are of too a good start. Remember that lots of money vouching for your security, means it becomes more and more expensive to attack that security. How is that? Ethereum runs by people running code to check that the rules are followed. They additionally put up money to say "I vouch for this to be correct". If they do not behave honestly, part of that money is taken away each lie after lie. In case they act honestly, they are rewarded. This economic incentive secures Ethereum. Now that Billions of dollars vouch, we would like to have that for our system too right?
With EigenLayer AVS we can! Let the police now be called Ethereum validators, with the job being to make sure the rules of not the state, but of Ethereum are followed. We can tell each Ethereum validator (the people/servers vouching for Ethereum security) to also secure our solution/need and get rewarded. The mangement system and detailled implementation of that is called EigenLayer. So EigenLayer allows us to add parts of the Ethereum security set by incentivizing them to verify our security rules as well.
Now they will earn more money if they behave honestly and we'll get security without having to find new people to run it and bootstrap a network of validators. That sounds good, but do we need it? What can it be used for?
The following are some examples of AVS's (don't worry if you don't understand the terms, easy decision matrix following) are fast finality layers, data availability layers, virtual machines, keeper networks, oracle networks, bridges, threshold cryptography schemes, AI inference/training systems, and trusted execution environment committee. Such as Eoracle a programmable data oracle connecting smart contracts with real-world data, which means it provides incentives to Ethereum validators through EigenLayer to verify that the real-world data it brings onchain is correct.
When do we need EigenLayer AVS in our business?
We may have business needs that require data to be verified or some agreement to be reached, that can't be encoded in Smart Contracts since it's not black/white but more grey. It can though be agreed up on by "people looking at it and agreeing" (intersubjective agreement). Now it gets interesting, we do need a set of people to look at it.
We need to get that security, because we have some parties involved that may not trust each other. We need credibly neutral verification. Enter EigenLayer AVS.
To make that decision easier, here's a decision tree to step down if an AVS may be for you:
What business benefits do we get from an AVS?
No need to recruit a bunch of validators (people to guarantee security) for us, we can just use an AVS.
No need to convince customers that we secure the data and are honest, we can prove it and let them verify it too using AVS.
We leverage the huge network of Ethereum validators and can market leveraging Ethereum's security network.
We allow trustless cooperation for problems wehre one can't just use blockchain itself.
Though remind yourself of the above decision matrix, not everything fits in an EigenLayer AVS and it may just not be needed.
Summary of EigenLayer AVS:
Goal: Provide a credibly neutral set of validators for your specific need
How: Let Ethereum validators earn more by validating your need as well
What: Any objectivly observable data between subjects (e.g. result of a football match, stock prices, whether Eminem released his new Album, ...)
If you want to learn more about EigenLayer the following readings are recommended:
- https://mirror.xyz/edatweets.eth/l3QtrWv-27h5DVkrSdFMq96MRJ8AotemvmZIQ23Ew3A
- https://www.blog.eigenlayer.xyz/ycie/
- https://www.blog.eigenlayer.xyz/the-three-dimensions-of-programmable-trust/
