| Author(s) | @mcurtis on behalf of Protocol Council |
|---|---|
| Created | March 12th, 2026 |
| Proposal | ELIP-012, ELIP-014, ELIP-015 |
| Status | Approved |
This document is an official communication between the EigenLayer Protocol Council and the community. It aims to provide transparency with the EigenLayer ecosystem regarding upcoming protocol upgrades and network changes.
In this report, we present the outcome and evaluation of the Protocol Council’s review of ELIP-012: The Incentives Committee, ELIP-014: Rewards v2.2 - Operator Set Rewards with Unique & Total Stake, and ELIP-015: Duration Vault Strategies.
ELIP-012: The Incentives Committee
Summary of Feedback
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General Support:
All reviewers generally support the proposal, viewing it as a necessary step to improve how EIGEN token emissions are allocated across the EigenLayer ecosystem. Members believe delegating incentive management to an Incentives Committee allows more responsive and nuanced distribution of rewards compared to purely programmatic systems, while noting that this includes a necessary centralization of control over incentive flows.
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Audit:
Certora conducted a full security review of on and off-chain verification components; all identified issues were addressed.
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Feedback:
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Jeff Commons: Notes that the proposal is particularly dependent on the ongoing performance of the Incentives Committee in properly communicating its positions to the community and consistently executing its responsibilities, with the largest risks in this proposal being error, malfeasance, or compromise of either the Incentives Committee.
Unit 410: Notes that the Incentive Committee’s ability to adjust weekly rewards may create challenges for Stakers and Operators who have greater restrictions in their ability to move capital in the system, making clear communication of its policy particularly important. They also highlight that the actions of the committee may create perceptions of bias, especially if the membership is limited to Eigen Foundation and Labs employees. Finally they point out that the incentive streams created by the Incentive Committee may be difficult for the community to observe without well maintained tools. However, they strongly agree with the notion that purely programmatic incentives can be readily gamed, and often require adjustments as ecosystems mature.
Gonçalo Sá: Describes the creation of an Incentives Committee as a “sensible and necessary step.” He acknowledged that the proposal introduces a degree of centralization but considered this acceptable given the safeguards in place, including multisig requirements, transparency obligations, on-chain observability, and Protocol Council override authority. He also highlighted that the committee charter appears comprehensive, covering conflict-of-interest rules and transparency provisions, while echoing other members’ suggestions to consider rate limiting reward adjustments and capping discretionary allocations.
Kirk Baird: Notes that delegating incentive allocations to a committee makes sense and should reduce the gaming often seen with purely programmatic incentive systems while allowing more granular control over promoting desirable AVS behaviors.
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Ecosystem Impact:
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Expected to make incentives more adaptive and strategically targeted.
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Necessarily creates greater centralization in the incentive allocation process.
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Overall Verdict: Approved
Potential risks are noted, but managed.
ELIP-014: Rewards v2.2 - Operator Set Rewards with Unique & Total Stake
Summary of Feedback
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General Support:
Protocol Council feedback on ELIP-014 is broadly positive and supportive. Reviewers generally agree that the proposal strengthens EigenLayer’s rewards infrastructure by introducing stake-weighted reward mechanisms for operator sets while maintaining strong security guarantees and backward compatibility. Council members believe the proposal addresses ecosystem needs—particularly from AVSs—by enabling more flexible and fair reward distribution models without significantly increasing protocol risk.
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Audit
Sigma Prime conducted a security audit of changes to the sidecar. All findings were addressed.
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Feedback:
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Jeff Commons: Notes the addition of new reward types as a meaningful improvement for AVSs and user experience, emphasizing that the change primarily adds functionality rather than modifying existing logic, which limits the security risk surface, with the main risks being access control errors, user mistakes, or sidecar bugs—each mitigated through testing, validation, and auditing.
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Unit 410: Supports the proposal, noting that handling fluctuations in Staker and Operator assets even if they happened a year ago is a key element of the ELIP’s success. Unit 410 points out that while necessary to create reward guarantees, the lack of cancellation means that rewards submissions cannot be reversed even if they contain errors, suggesting the creation of better tooling to support construction and signing of rewards submissions.
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Gonçalo Sá: Supports the proposal, indicating that the proposal is well designed and fills an important gap in the rewards system.
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Kirk Baird: Supports the proposal with no additional commentary.
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Security:
Minimal risk due to its addition of functionality, rather than modification of existing functions.
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Ecosystem Impact:
Expected to provide more flexibility on to AVSs in their distribution of rewards.
Overall Verdict: Approved
Recognized as a general improvement to usage of the rewards system.
ELIP-015: Duration Vault Strategies
Summary of Feedback
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General Support:
The Protocol Council’s reviews of ELIP-015 (Duration Vault Strategies) are broadly positive, with members agreeing that the proposal introduces a useful new primitive while maintaining acceptable risk levels. Reviewers highlight that the design enables time-bound staking through fixed-duration vaults that act as their own operators, allowing AVSs to obtain guaranteed slashable stake during defined periods and enabling new forms of agreements between participants.
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Audit:
Certora conducted a security audit of duration vault contracts. All findings were addressed.
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Feedback:
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Jeff Commons: notes that the architecture of permissionlessly deployed single-use vaults with controlled lifecycles fits well within EigenLayer’s existing design.
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Unit 410: supports the proposal as an elegant mechanism for unlocking new capital participation use cases, while emphasizing that many operational risks depend on how AVSs deploy and configure vaults, meaning participants should evaluate vault deployers carefully.
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Gonçalo Sá: views the design as sound and filling a meaningful protocol gap, though he notes potential concerns around permissionless deployment and short-duration vault edge cases in which a vault could potentially expire before allocation is completed. He does not see these concerns as blocking.
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Kirk Baird: notes the need for additional tooling for AVSs to permissionlessly deploy configured vault, but believes the constraints appear sufficiently tight to prevent misuse.
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Complexity & Risk:
Minimal, limited to correct configuration when deployed by AVSs.
Overall Verdict: Approved
Minimizes complexity and introduces a new, simpler way for capital to engage with EigenLayer.
Additional Notes
- While ELIPs 14 and 15 were posted to the github repository for 3 and 2 months respectively, they were not posted to the EigenLayer forum until this week. While not blocking, additional process should be put in place to ensure that such oversights do not occur in the future.