What is EigenLayer's awkward concept of intersubjective forking?

WebX实验室2025/11/27 04:53

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By:WebX实验室

Eigenlayer has abstracted a new category of facts (intersubjective) that cannot be solved by previous solutions (ETH Restaking), so a new solution has been proposed.

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Author: Ebunker Co-founder 0xTodd This article is reprinted with permission

A fact can generally be divided into three categories: Objective facts Subjective facts And “intersubjective” facts, which are somewhere in between. For example: 1. Objective fact: for instance, 1+1=2; 2. Subjective fact: for example, someone thinks @0x_todd is handsome; 3. Intersubjective fact, which is a bit abstract, comes from “social consensus,” such as: ChatGPT is one of the leading AIs today. Intersubjective facts are not as set in stone as objective facts, nor as arbitrary as subjective facts. They exist between subjects—in plain language, they are the consensus of the masses, even if they may not be the truth. If we look at Crypto, here are a few more examples: 1. Objective fact: for example, if EVM executes a piece of code and performs a certain function, it will definitely output a certain result. 2. Subjective fact: for example, a tweet where I think @eigenlayer allocated too little to early holders; 3. Intersubjective fact, also from “social consensus,” such as: bitcoin is the leader of crypto; or a certain node acted maliciously because it concealed some data. Now, everyone knows what Re-staking is: Using ETH as collateral to perform some validation work; 1. If validation is successful, you earn a commission; 2. If you mess up, your collateral is deducted. But how do you determine whether you actually messed up or succeeded? Who deducts the collateral? This is a tough problem. Verifying “objective facts” is fine, as there are very clear standards. For example, whether a smart contract executed successfully—this is easy to handle. Using $ETH as collateral for verifying objective facts is not a problem. But verifying “intersubjective facts” is troublesome, as the standards are not so clear. Would you still dare to use $ETH as collateral in this case? Definitely not. Therefore, Eigenlayer believes that for any validation involving intersubjective facts, ETH should no longer be used for re-staking, but instead the $Eigen token should be used. This still doesn’t solve our previous problem. How do you determine whether you actually messed up or succeeded? 1. Rely on majority voting? That could lead to “tyranny of the majority,” where large holders could team up to wipe out small holders. 2. Rely on a committee decision? Then why are we in crypto at all? So, Eigen token staking plans to use a third approach: 3. Rely on forks. If there is a huge disagreement over an “intersubjective fact,” the last resort is to fork. If you (and those on your side) believe everyone else is wrong, even if you don’t currently hold the majority, you can directly fork the token and confiscate the others’ tokens. Note, this is the ultimate trump card.

So what exactly is a huge disagreement over an “intersubjective fact”?

For example, back in the day, Trump lost his re-election by a small margin of votes, and Biden became the 46th President of the United States. However, in a brief window, Trump claimed that Biden “stole” his votes and that he was the real legitimate 46th President.
Before this matter was settled, there were certainly many people who firmly believed Trump was the real 46th president, and they had no subjective intent to do evil, and neither side’s supporters could convince the other. Eigenlayer believes that the best solution to this kind of problem is to mutually fork tokens and let time test everything, because eventually one side will gradually lose legitimacy and approach zero. So: 1. In the eyes of Trump supporters (i.e., the Trump version of EIGEN), all Biden supporters’ collateral should be confiscated; 2. From the perspective of Biden supporters (i.e., the Biden version of EIGEN), all Trump supporters’ collateral should be confiscated. We all know the final result: Trump is not the 46th president in the public eye, the Trump version of EIGEN eventually goes to zero, so confiscating Biden supporters’ tokens doesn’t matter—they’re all worth 0 anyway. Conversely, Biden is the 46th president in the public eye, the Biden version of EIGEN becomes the official EIGEN, and Trump supporters whose tokens were previously confiscated have paid the price. This is the problem that intersubjective forking aims to solve. Therefore, these must use the EIGEN token, not ETH. ETH forks are too difficult, and it’s not good for ETH security. Of course, there’s also the self-interest of locking up their own token as much as possible. There’s another small detail: EIGEN uses a dual-token model.

One is a standard ERC-20 token, which cannot be forked and can be used on exchanges or DeFi. The other is the token truly used for determining facts, which can theoretically be forked infinitely if there is a huge disagreement. These two tokens are isolated from each other but have a certain mapping relationship. If you’re interested, you can check the whitepaper; I won’t elaborate here.

To summarize, Eigenlayer abstracts a new type of fact (intersubjective), which cannot be solved by previous solutions (ETH Restaking), so it proposes a new solution (staking and slashing based on the EIGEN token), i.e., issuing a new work token $EIGEN.

Ebunker, a long-term Ethereum supporter, closely follows Ethereum’s technological development, proposal upgrades, and community changes, sharing research and views on key Ethereum sectors such as Staking, L2, and DeFi.

Currently, Ebunker includes Ebunker Pool (a non-custodial Ethereum staking pool) and Ebunker Venture (Ethereum maximization venture capital), among other businesses.

Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.

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