ETH staking passes withdrawals for the first time after Shapella upgrade

Over 1 million ETH has been withdrawn since the Shapella hard fork on April 12. However, a significant chunk of addresses has gone back to re-staking their ETH.

Ethereum blockchain underwent a successful Shapella upgrade on April 12, making way for validators to withdraw their staked Ether (ETH) from the Beacon chain after three years. After seeing over a million ETH in withdrawals in the first week, the amount of staked ETH has now surpassed the number of ETH being withdrawn for the first time after the Shapella upgrade.

Data from the on-chain analytic firm Nansen suggests that there are more ETH being staked at present than withdrawal requests. As of April 17, the ETH staking volume ETH staked 124,000 ETH exceeded the withdrawal volume of 64,800 ETH for the first time. In the last 24 hours, the amount of staked ETH was 94,968 against 27,076 in withdrawals. The first round was mostly partial withdrawals from Lido and old validators. It takes approximately three days to get into the withdrawal queue.

*Volume of staked ETH vs withdrawals. Source: Nansen*

Shapella upgrade was being projected as the make-or-break situation for the Ethereum blockchain as millions in unlocked ETH posed a risk of mass selling of the token. However, contrary to popular belief, the majority of the validators are re-staking their unlocked Ether. Crypto exchange Binance will open withdrawals on April 19.

Out of the 1 million withdrawn ETH, 3 addresses re-staked ETH with a total of 19,844 ETH. 3 addresses transferred ETH to Centralized exchanges after withdrawal, with a total of 71,444 ETH sent to different exchanges. Other whales did the same with some sending it to Huobi staking address and few other to CEX, according to data shared by Lookonchain.

Most of the early withdrawals are staking rewards, and a few validators like Kraken had to exit in order to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission ruling. Currently, 22,231 validators have signed up for a full exit out of the total of 574,624, while 910,930 ETH out of the 18.6 million ETH is slated to be withdrawn.

Another prominent reason for the diminishing withdrawals could be the ETH price, as the average price of staked ETH is about $2,137.

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