Eden Network’s Final Act: MEV Protocol Shuts Down & Treasury Goes to Token Holders

Another crypto project bites the dust—but this one's going out with a bang.

MEV powerhouse Eden Network is winding down operations, opting to distribute its treasury directly to token holders rather than fade into obscurity. Because nothing says 'decentralization' like a fire sale exit.

The great redistribution

No last-ditch pivots to AI or vague 'Layer 3' promises here. Eden's executing a clean shutdown—a rarity in an industry where zombie chains linger for years. The treasury distribution amounts to a forced ROI event for holders who stuck around.

MEV's brutal economics claim another victim

The protocol's closure exposes the cutthroat reality of maximal extractable value strategies—when the edge disappears, so does the revenue. At least this time, the bagholders get paid instead of the VCs.

One final middle finger to traditional finance: Eden proves crypto projects can fail properly—with transparency, and actual asset distributions. Take notes, Wall Street.

Archer DAO’s Rebranding to Eden Network 

This network was launched in 2020 as Archer DAO to create new income streams for Ethereum miners through MEV capture. But in 2021, after Ethereum’s EIP-1559 upgrade reduced miners’ revenue potential, it rebranded as Eden Network to keep supporting miners while shielding users from the harmful effects of MEV.

At its height, Eden’s miner partnerships made up over half of Ethereum’s hashrate, with thousands of transactions processed through its RPC each day. Following Ethereum’s MOVE to proof-of-stake (PoS) in 2022, the network became known as an MEV-Boost relay operator, at one point recording the highest average block rewards among all relays.

Over time, the relay and block building sector grew fiercely competitive and expensive, leaving only a small number of operators able to turn a profit.

EDEN Holders to Share 2,000 ETH Treasury

As part of the shutdown, Eden will distribute its treasury of 2,000 ETH to EDEN token holders under a token retirement programme. The swap is open now and will close on 30 September at 23:59 UTC. 

Each EDEN will be exchanged at a fixed rate of 0.00001506 ETH, with only the circulating supply of about 132.8 million tokens eligible. All treasury-held and unvested contributor tokens have been burned.

The distribution is limited to non-U.S. residents. Holders with tokens staked in Eden’s app will need to unstake them to be eligible. Any ETH left after the programme ends will go towards covering the company’s wind-down costs.

Eden has directed users to its retirement portal for the swap process and to its blog for more details on the shutdown.

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