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EigenLayer’s native token, EIGEN, cracked the top 100 tokens by market capitalization after commencing trading on Oct. 1, according to CoinMarketCap.

The token unlocked at 5:00 am UTC and has been trading between $3.50 and $4.50 per token on Binance.

According to Binance, it’s currently trading at around $3.85, implying a fully diluted value of approximately $6.5 billion.

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Its price aligns with the implied spot prices on derivatives exchanges and over-the-counter trading before the launch .

“EIGEN launched exactly in line with the pre-market price, sitting at $7B FDV,” Aylo, the pseudonymous founder of Alpha Please, said in an Oct. 1 post on the X social media platform.

EigenLayer’s EIGEN currently ranks 94th among tokens by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.

That’s lower than Optimism ( OP ), Uniswap ( UNI ), and Filecoin ( FIL ) but more than Ethena ( ENA ).

“6 months ago I’m not sure anyone would have said that EIGEN would be valued less than those above coins,” Aylo said, while adding:

“EigenLayer is the innovation on Ethereum this cycle, and has had more coverage than almost anything else in the EVM in the last year.”

EigenLayer launched Eigen in a May airdrop but blocked the tokens from being transferred until October.

A person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph that informal over-the-counter trades purportedly rose from around $2 in August to roughly $3.50 as recently as Sept. 24. These comments are consistent with information from EigenLayer’s community forums.

Tokenholders stand to benefit as more protocols start paying EigenLayer’s retakers, who deposit tokens — including EIGEN — as collateral to secure other networks, or “actively validated services” (AVS), in EigenLayer’s parlance.

According to DefiLlama, as of Sept. 30, EigenLayer commanded nearly $12 billion in total value locked (TVL).

In August, EigenDA, EigenLayer’s affiliated AVS, started paying restakers in Ether ( ETH ) and EIGEN rewards. Other AVS, including Arpa Network, are following suit .

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