EigenLayer's original design extends staking to services such as data availability, oracles, and other infrastructure that need their own validation rules. Participants can contribute eligible restaked assets and delegate to operators who run a service's software. The economic idea is that an operator can earn compensation while exposing allocated value to penalties for breaking the service's commitments. This does not make every service an Ethereum protocol feature: its tasks, verification rules, and failure conditions are defined separately from Ethereum's own consensus duties.

ELIP-002 specifies an accounting model in which operators allocate portions of delegated stake to operator sets associated with a service. That uniquely allocated portion is slashable by the corresponding set rather than being simultaneously promised as the same slashable security everywhere. An illustrative operator might allocate different portions to data availability and computation services. Understanding exposure requires inspecting those allocations, not simply the operator's aggregate delegated balance.

Allocation and deallocation delays also mean that requesting a change does not necessarily make an existing commitment disappear immediately.

The specification gives services substantial flexibility over the conditions under which allocated stake can be slashed. A participant therefore needs to understand who can initiate a penalty, how faults are established, and whether the service adds challenge or review mechanisms. A restaking receipt or a high aggregate value does not answer those questions. Buggy slashing logic, an operator's failure, and an underlying asset's own risks can have different causes. Rewards compensate a set of exposures; they are not evidence that the added obligations are risk-free or universally insured.