The inflow of funds into staking Ethereum exceeded 570 ths ETH in the last week. And that was maximum for the two and a half years that passed since the launch of this program

During the week from April 17 to April 23, 571.9 thousand ETH ($1.05 billion) were deposited in staking on the Ethereum network. And this was a record volume since the launch of the service two and a half years ago. According to data presented by 21Shares investment analyst Tom Wang on the Dune platform. The figure has only reached such close values twice – after the launch of staking in November 2020 (556,000 ETH) and in March 2022 (532,000 ETH).

On the night of April 12 to 13, the Shapella update was successfully activated on the Ethereum network. This, for the first time, allowed Ethereum owners who deposited coins in staking to withdraw all or part of their funds.

Users began actively withdrawing funds from staking, but also depositing. According to TokenUnlocks, a platform that tracks cryptocurrency unlocking information. By April 25, 1.6 million ETH (worth a total of $2.9 billion) had been withdrawn from staking since the fork (in 13 days). And 1.09 million ETH ($2 billion) had been deposited.

Most of the funds that are withdrawn are not the coins themselves, which were blocked when they were deposited. But the rewards in Ethereum earned by users for depositing assets. Validators must block exactly 32 ETH in order to open a node and receive rewards for keeping the network running.

Keeping the accumulated rewards in the node does not increase returns. Therefore, many validators withdraw the amount of rewards without touching the initially deposited 32 ETH. In order for the rewards to be profitable as well, they are withdrawn and re-run nodes with them.

Our experts note that since the Shapella update, five major institutional-level stacking service providers. These include – Bitcoin Suisse, Figment, Kiln, Stakefish and Staked.us – have staked a total of over 230k ETH ($425 million).