Ethereum Researchers Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist Relinquish EigenLayer Roles Over Conflict of Interest Concerns

Election 2024 coverage presented by Ethereum Foundation researchers Dankrad Feist and Justin Drake have resigned from their advisory roles at EigenLayer

CoinDesk: Dankrad Feist and Justin Drake have stepped down from their advisory roles at EigenLayer, months after a controversy erupted over potential conflicts of interest within the Ethereum community.

Feist and Drake, both researchers at the non-profit Ethereum Foundation, disclosed earlier this year that they had each accepted advisory roles with EigenLayer, a up-and-coming cryptocurrency project. Each researcher was allotted a significant sum of EIGEN tokens in exchange for helping guide the upcoming project and its roadmap.

The controversy surrounding these payouts revealed deep divisions within the Ethereum community — and among some of its most prominent figures — regarding the industry’s still-developing norms concerning conflicts of interest.

On Saturday, both of the researchers disclosed that they had relinquished their advisory roles with EigenLayer.

“While I believe that the role was negotiated in good faith and with the aim of making sure that EigenLayer is well aligned with Ethereum,” Feist said in an X post, “I understand that the perception of this relationship has been different and that for many the conflict of interest this creates is difficult to reconcile with my role as an Ethereum researcher.”

"I want to apologize to the Ethereum community and EF colleagues for the drama I caused," Drake said in his own X post announcing that he had stepped down from his EigenLayer advisorship in September. "In hindsight it was a bad move for me to make."

In a message to CoinDesk, Drake clarified that his advisorship was terminated before any of his EIGEN tokens had been vested.

The Ethereum Foundation regularly awards grants to projects building atop the Ethereum ecosystem and has a major stake in the network’s overall development. Some community members feared that EigenLayer's payouts to foundation researchers amounted to an attempt by the project to influence the broader Ethereum network's development roadmap.

In addition to stepping down from his EigenLayer advisory role, Drake took the added step of committing not to make investments or take advisory roles in the future.

“Going forward I will turn down all advisorships, angel investments, and security councils,” Drake said on X. “This personal policy goes above and beyond the recent EF-wide conflict of interest policy, not because that was asked of me but because I want to signal commitment to neutrality.”

Sam Kessler is deputy managing editor for tech and protocols at CoinDesk, covering decentralized technology, infrastructure and governance. He owns ETH and BTC.

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