TVS: Total Value Secured
Total Value Secured (TVS) is the USD value of all assets delegated to an operator. It's the headline metric on every operator profile and a key input into risk scoring.
How TVS Is Calculated
TVS converts raw on-chain share balances into a dollar value through three steps:
TVS = (shares / 10^decimals) x exchange_rate x token_price_usd
Step 1: Shares
When you delegate to an operator through a strategy (like stETH or WETH), you receive shares in that strategy. Shares are the on-chain unit of accounting --- they represent your proportional claim on the strategy's underlying assets.
Step 2: Exchange Rate
Each strategy has an exchange rate that converts shares into underlying tokens. For example, if the stETH strategy's exchange rate is 1.05, then 100 shares represent 105 stETH worth of underlying value.
Exchange rates are fetched directly from the strategy contracts on-chain (via the sharesToUnderlying function) and refreshed hourly.
Special case: The BeaconChainETH strategy uses a fixed 1:1 exchange rate, since beacon chain shares directly represent ETH.
Step 3: Token Price
The underlying token amount is multiplied by the current USD price. EigenWatch uses a cascading pricing system for reliability:
| Priority | Source | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Chainlink Oracles | Major tokens (ETH, WBTC, USDC) |
| 2nd | DefiLlama | DEX-traded tokens |
| 3rd | CoinGecko | Less liquid tokens |
| 4th | Proxy Pricing | Derivative tokens (stETH, rETH) |
If the primary source is unavailable, the system automatically falls back to the next source. Token prices are refreshed every 4 hours.
Proxy Pricing
Some tokens don't have direct price feeds. For derivative tokens like stETH or cbETH, EigenWatch uses proxy pricing --- the price of the base token (ETH) multiplied by an adjustment factor that accounts for any premium or discount.
For example, stETH might be priced as ETH price x 0.998, reflecting a small discount to the underlying ETH value.
Example Calculation
An operator has 100 shares in the stETH strategy:
shares = 100
decimals = 18
exchange_rate = 1.05 (stETH strategy)
token_price = $2,000 (ETH-based pricing)
TVS = (100 / 10^18) x 1.05 x $2,000
In practice, shares are stored as large integers (100e18), so the decimal division normalizes them to human-readable amounts.
Per-Strategy TVS
An operator's total TVS is the sum of TVS across all their strategies. The dashboard breaks this down so you can see which strategies contribute most to the operator's total value.
Update Frequency
| Component | Refresh Rate |
|---|---|
| Shares | Event-driven (as delegations happen) |
| Exchange Rates | Hourly |
| Token Prices | Every 4 hours |
| TVS Calculation | After price updates |
Data Quality
EigenWatch tracks the reliability of each TVS calculation:
- Price source is recorded so you know whether the price came from Chainlink (most reliable) or a fallback source
- Proxy pricing flag indicates when a derivative token's price is estimated from a related token
- Completeness flag indicates whether all data components were available
Why TVS Matters
TVS is more than just a vanity metric. It reflects:
- Market confidence --- delegators are putting real capital behind this operator
- Security backing --- more TVS means more stake securing the AVSs this operator runs
- Network position --- TVS relative to other operators factors into the Network Score
However, a large TVS doesn't automatically mean low risk. An operator with $100M in TVS but a single delegator is fundamentally different from one with $100M spread across hundreds of delegators.