More than 1 million Ether (ETH) valued at $2.1 billion have been withdrawn from the Ethereum Beacon Chain in the first four days after the deployment of the Shapella hard fork, and Ether has broken above $2,100 for the first time in 11 months.
The 1.03 million ETH withdrawals have come from 473,7000 withdrawal requests; Saturday, April 15, was the day with the highest withdrawal, with 392,800 ETH, according to data from beaconcha.in.
Of the active validators, almost 87% or 469,000 of the 540,000 are able to withdraw their staked Ether.
Although members of the Ethereum community were divided on the impact that Shapella would have on the Ether price, the first four days have produced a rally of close to 10%.
The numbers are not a “surprise” to Lachlan Feeney, CEO of blockchain development and consulting firm Labrys, who told Cointelegraph that many validators are re-staking Ether on the Beacon Chain:
“Much of the participation that has been withdrawn in recent days is going straight back into the Beacon Chain as validators look to increase their interest. So much so that the net share is increasing.”
Given the current macroeconomic climate, Feeney said that many early stakers wanted to liquidate after what for some has been a wait of almost 30 months.
In the medium to long term, Feeney believes that the Shapella hard fork will only increase the amount of Ether staked, which of course will only strengthen Ethereum at the consensus level:
“Since Shapella is a massive risk reduction event, in the medium to long term there will be more ETH staking, not less. We anticipate that in the not too distant future we will reach a record Ether staked.”
Markus Thielen, head of research at digital asset platform Matrixport, told Cointelegraph that The shutdown of crypto exchange Kraken’s staking services may have contributed to the higher numbers:
“It seems to be largely due to Kraken’s staking business being undone. This will only have a temporary effect, as we are also seeing significant demand from investors who are now able to stake with more visibility into the liquidity of staked positions.”
Thielen said that he expects a large amount of Kraken’s unstaked Ether to be “recycled” back into the Beacon Chain through other entities.
Although Thielen expects the positive price developments to cool this week amid increased selling pressure, he believes that Shapella will ultimately attract more institutional investors to stake Ethereum.
The 1 million milestone marks a 500% increase over the April 11 prediction by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode, which estimated that only 170,000 Ether would remain unstaked after the first week of Shapella.
The blockchain analytics company Nansen went slightly overboard, predicting that 1.4 million Ether would be withdrawn after Shapella’s early days.
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