EigenLayer Price(EIGEN)

Crypto Morning Brief: Flow Protocol was hacked, with approximately $3.9 million exploited due to an execution layer flaw, though user deposits remain secure. The network is temporarily halted, with a target restart in 4-6 hours. Meanwhile, several tokens, including HYPE, SUI, and EIGEN, are set for significant unlocks this week, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. In other news, Uniswap’s treasury burned 100 million UNI tokens ($596 million) following a passed proposal. Michael Saylor hinted at potential Bitcoin accumulation by MicroStrategy, while former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison is scheduled for early release in January. Japan’s central bank emphasized the need for steady interest rate hikes in the coming months. Additionally, the SEC is shifting from enforcement to a "compliance" model starting in 2026.

This week's major token unlocks feature significant releases from EigenLayer and Optimism. EigenLayer unlocks 36.94 million EIGEN tokens, valued at approximately $6.39 million. This release represents about 7.5% of its circulating supply. EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking, a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security, allowing users to restake their ETH and extend its security to other applications on the network. Additionally, Optimism unlocks 31.44 million OP tokens, worth roughly $3.27 million. Optimism is a Layer 2 scaling solution that uses Optimistic Rollup technology to scale the Ethereum network, enabling high transaction throughput while maintaining Ethereum's security. The provided images detail each project's specific release schedules.

AI inference is becoming a crucial layer of internet infrastructure, yet it remains largely dependent on costly, capacity-limited centralized systems with potential security risks. Meanwhile, millions of powerful computers sit idle globally. Eigen Labs' Darkbloom network aims to utilize this idle capacity by enabling distributed AI inference on Mac computers, specifically those with Apple Silicon chips. Darkbloom's architecture consists of three components: users who send inference requests, a coordinator (operated by Eigen Labs) that routes these requests, and providers (Mac owners) whose machines run the models and return outputs without being able to see the request content. The system prioritizes privacy through a hardened provider process, software integrity checks, and hardware-supported attestation based on Apple's security architecture to ensure verifiable privacy. Economically, Darkbloom differs from traditional models. It leverages existing hardware, with marginal costs primarily driven by electricity, allowing it to offer pricing roughly 50% lower than major API aggregators. Providers keep 100% of the inference revenue, and the project does not rely on token subsidies; earnings come solely from real AI inference demand. However, early-stage earnings are modest, with top providers currently earning under $6 per day, influenced by factors like hardware specs, uptime, and network demand. The network currently supports models like Google's Gemma 4 and OpenAI's GPT-OSS via OpenRouter. To participate as a provider, users need an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 or later, must install the Darkbloom provider software, and keep the machine online with a stable internet connection.