Introducing Programmatic Incentives v2

General
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As we approach the one year anniversary of Programmatic Incentives on August 15th, we have an opportunity to re-evaluate the logic behind the program.

The Eigen Foundation is excited to propose the first step towards a revamp of Programmatic Incentives, the next evolution of EigenLayer’s onchain rewards engine for restaked security. In this first proposal, the Foundation is recommending both an increase in the overall reward rate and a rebalancing of total allocation to emit more incentives to staked EIGEN - a key step towards growing the EIGEN staking ecosystem and accelerating application development and innovation on EigenCloud.

This post outlines these proposed changes, which we look forward to discussing with the community and our various ecosystem partners.

Note: The v1 incentive contracts will remain in place until modified by the Protocol Council. Until a v2 proposal is accepted, Programmatic Incentives v1 rewards will continue to accrue indefinitely. Emitted v1 rewards do not expire. See v1 of Programmatic Incentives here.

Current Proposed Changes

We propose an update to the programmatic rewards allocation as follows:

  • 3% to ETH Stakers & their Operators (no change)

  • 4% to EIGEN Stakers & their Operators (up from 1%)

  • 1% to Business Development & Ecosystem Growth Rewards (net new)

These change increases the overall reward rate from 4% to 8% inflation annually, roughly 2.67M EIGEN/week. The goal here is to better align long-term incentives with the growth of EigenCloud, catalyze new innovation and application development for the broader EIGEN restaking ecosystem.

These updates would be reflected in the first weekly reward distributions following successful governance approval and implementation, targeting late August 2025.

Future Changes & Improvements

The Foundation and community must continuously evaluate incentives as the restaking market develops. In partnership with the community, we would like to examine how certain factors impact all marketplace participants, like the aggregate reward rate, reward balancing, and unit economics of the protocol.

We are actively considering ways to expand the qualification criteria for earning programmatic incentives, including support for AVS-specific rewards boosting, productive unique stake allocations, and governance-related delegation.

More details on these recommended qualification paths will be proposed for comment in the coming weeks. We welcome community comments on how we might improve incentive mechanisms.

Until a v2 proposal is accepted, Programmatic Incentives v1 rewards will continue to accrue indefinitely. Emitted v1 rewards do not expire.

  • Retroactive Accrual: Once approved, v2 accrual would begin the week after the proposal is accepted by governance and will appear as “Lifetime Earned Rewards” in the app.

  • Weekly Claiming: Every Tuesday at 19:00 UTC, new rewards would become claimable via the EigenLayer app, CLI, and smart contracts.

This is just the beginning. v2 proposes an evolution in how EigenCloud supports its ecosystem, with more utility, more rewards, and more ways to participate.

Written by the Eigen Foundation, a Cayman Islands foundation company dedicated to stewarding EigenLayer and its ecosystem.

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Request for Inclusion of Treehouse ETH (tETH) in Programmatic Incentives v2

Overview

Treehouse Protocol respectfully requests the inclusion of Treehouse ETH (tETH) in Programmatic Incentives v2 (PI v2) under the “ETH Stakers & Operators” category. This proposal aims to bootstrap adoption of tETH within EigenLayer, onboard $500M+ in existing liquidity and 65,000+ Treehouse users, and support the launch of the Treehouse Decentralized Offered Rate (DOR) AVS. By aligning incentives with EigenLayer PI, Treehouse can expand EigenLayer’s AVS set while strengthening restaked security in a slashable, incentive-driven framework.

About Treehouse Protocol

Treehouse is building the decentralized fixed income layer for crypto through two primitives:

  • tAssets (Liquid Staking Token): tAssets unify fragmented PoS interest rate markets by aligning staking and lending yields. Our first product, tETH, has surpassed $500M in TVL and is integrated with Aave, Compound, Pendle, and Euler.

  • DOR (Decentralized Offered Rate): A decentralized benchmark rate–setting mechanism, inspired by LIBOR/SOFR but transparent and incentive-aligned. DOR currently produces the Treehouse Ethereum Staking Rate (TESR) across multiple forward tenors, with a roadmap to expand into other crypto benchmark rates.

Together, tAssets and DOR create a fixed income standard for DeFi, with Treehouse positioned to bring both into the EigenLayer ecosystem.

The Treehouse DOR AVS on EigenLayer

The Treehouse AVS leverages EigenLayer Operators (“Panelists”) to secure benchmark rate predictions. Panelists, supported by Delegators, submit daily spot and forward rates. Rewards are distributed based on accuracy, while slashing ensures integrity.

  • Panelists (EigenLayer Operators): Institutions such as Staking Rewards, A41, Pier Two, Selini Capital, Linkpool, RockX, Luganodes, and MatrixedLink are already engaged.

  • Delegators: tETH and TREE restakers who back Panelists and share in their outcomes.

  • Rewards Pool: Funded by Treehouse DAO and external referencing fees, with slashed stake redistributed or burned to maintain system integrity.

  • Referencers: Protocols/entities that consume benchmark rates via referencing fees.

Crucially, Treehouse intends for tETH restaked capital to be slashable over time, aligning with EigenLayer’s north star of expanding AVSs that enforce slashing as a security mechanism.

How will the AVS work?

An overview of our architecture can be found in the figure below:

A diagram of a diagram AI-generated content may be incorrect.
A diagram of a diagram AI-generated content may be incorrect.1204×655 32.1 KB

Deploying PI to Secure the Treehouse AVS

We propose that EigenLayer PI emissions (in EIGEN) be directed to the Treehouse AVS Rewards Pool, which then distributes rewards to Panelists and Delegators based on performance.

This structure integrates PI with Treehouse’s slashing/reward mechanism, creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop:

  • Accurate Panelists are rewarded, unreliable ones are penalized.

  • Delegators share in the outcomes of their chosen Panelists.

  • Restakers gain confidence that performance directly secures both DOR outputs and EigenLayer itself.

Rationale for Incentivizing Treehouse AVS

  • Expands EigenLayer AVS diversity: Introduces benchmark rate–setting as a new category of slashable AVS.

  • Drives adoption: DOR is already live, with institutional Panelists and users generating fees.

  • Brings scale: tETH has $500M+ liquidity and 65,000+ users who can immediately restake on EigenLayer.

  • Strengthens EigenLayer security: By making tETH restakeable and eventually slashable, Treehouse adds meaningful capital to EigenLayer’s security budget.

Request

Treehouse requests that tETH be included in PI v2 under the “ETH Stakers & Operators” category. Programmatic Incentives will accelerate the onboarding of tETH capital, expand EigenLayer’s AVS set, and reinforce the ecosystem’s long-term security through a slashable, incentive-aligned benchmark rate AVS.

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As an EIGEN holder, I am against this proposal. It is missing key details and the rationale is not logical.

Treehouse has a native token available to reward operators and stakers, and is not an AVS on mainnet (or Holesky or Hoodi testnets).

No information about the fees generated was provided, nor is available on DefiLlama. Perhaps these fees and the Treehouse token could be used to reward Treehouse restakers/operators instead of EIGEN.

Treehouse could instead be onboarded to EigenLayer as an LST, once restaked into EigenCloud, it’s stakers would be rewarded under the ETH Stakers & their operators category without additional emissions of EIGEN - they would share the already present 3% emissions.

The proposal mostly read like Treehouse would deploy an AVS, on the condition they receive EIGEN emissions. They are able to permissionlessly deploy an AVS, and implement slashing already but have chosen not to do so.

In the absence of any AVS deployment (mainnet & testnet), or information on fees generated by the protocol, it does not make sense for EigenCloud to direct programmatic incentives to Treehouse.

I believe that instead they should deploy an AVS and on-board as an LST. The performance and development of activity of the AVS could then be revewied and be eligible for a grant in the future.

Treehouse requests that tETH be included in PI v2 under the “ETH Stakers & Operators” category. Programmatic Incentives will accelerate the onboarding of tETH capital, expand EigenLayer’s AVS set, and reinforce the ecosystem’s long-term security through a slashable, incentive-aligned benchmark rate AVS.

In conclusion, the key issue here is that they request EIGEN to ‘accelerate the onboarding’ of tETH, but how much EIGEN are they asking to do that, and how will they do that? If instead they onboarded as an LST, they can receive existing EIGEN emissions for their stakers - without creating new emissions.

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Coming Deployment of Programmatic Incentives v2.0

As previously proposed, Programmatic Incentives V2 (PIv2.0) updates the weekly programmatic incentives to provide 4% reward rate (increase from 1%) for EIGEN. The 3% reward rate for ETH strategies will continue.
See ELIP-011 for more information. The assoicated upgrade has been put through EigenLayer governance with the protocol council.

Logistics & Migration

Programmatic Inventives V1 will have two more distributions:

  1. Thursday, September 25th. Reward will be from September 25th to October 2nd

  2. Thursday, October 2nd. Reward will be from October 2nd to October 9th

Then the first PIv2.0 submission will be from October 9th to October 16th

Upgrade/migration transactions have also been queued.

Here are the details:

https://github.com/eigenfoundation/ELIPs/blob/main/ELIPs/ELIP-011.md

https://github.com/Layr-Labs/EigenHopper/pull/10

https://app.safe.global/transactions/queue?safe=0xBE1685C81aA44FF9FB319dD389addd9374383e90

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x07ae59cf737d137cb790e178f65443cfe425ad2a0a3cea5ca3f27aa49bf5b857

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