30s Summary

Ethereum Foundation researcher, Justin Drake, announced his departure from the Eigen Foundation – which oversees the Eigenlayer restaking protocol – on November 2. This follows his resignation as an advisor to the Eigen Foundation in September 2024. Drake has apologized to the Ethereum community and committed to remaining impartial, opting to focus his efforts on Ethereum’s primary network. This move comes after controversy surrounding his engagement with the Eigen Foundation, which resulted in the creation of a new conflict of interest policy within the Ethereum Foundation.

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There was a bit of a drama back in May 2024, and now Justin Drake, the Ethereum Foundation researcher, has said he’s leaving the Eigen Foundation. The Eigen Foundation is the main group that oversees this thing called the Eigenlayer restaking protocol, and Justin announced his decision to leave on social media on November 2.

Interestingly, Justin left his position as an advisor to the Eigen Foundation back in September 2024, and he also bailed on the Ultra Sound team. He even went as far as apologizing to the Ethereum community in his post:

He said, “From now on, I’ll be saying no to all advising gigs, angel investments, and security councils. I’m doing this to show that I’m committed to being impartial. It’s my own personal policy and it’s even stricter than the new conflict of interest policy at the Ethereum Foundation.”

Instead of doing other projects, Justin says he wants to dedicate his time and effort to work on Ethereum’s primary network — especially its consensus layer which is super important.

Back in May 19, 2024, Justin stirred the pot a bit when he shared that he’d taken a paid advisory role at the Eigen Foundation. This didn’t sit well with some folks in the Ethereum community. As part of that gig, he was given millions of dollars worth of EIGEN tokens. At that time, Justin said those tokens were worth more than all his other stuff combined. He also made it clear that his role was just to research potential risks associated with restaking but he wouldn’t be involved in promoting EigenLayer.

Around the same time, another big name researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, Dankrad Feist, also started advising EigenLayer which got people even more riled up about potential conflict of interest.

So, all this drama led the Ethereum Foundation to create a new policy to deal with conflicts of interest, just to make sure they don’t find themselves in the same boat in the future.