On April 13th, the Ethereum developers initiated the Shanghai update on the main network, which successfully enabled the withdrawal of coins from staking.
Despite initial concerns, this development did not negatively impact the value of ETH. Currently, there is approximately $32 billion worth of ETH, or 18.1 million ETH, locked up on the Ethereum network for staking.
After the update, only around 65,000 ETH were withdrawn from staking, while the number of deposits was 15,344 ETH.
At present, there are over 700,000 ETH queued up for withdrawal from staking.
Some analysts worried that validators withdrawing funds from staking would sell their coins, resulting in a sharp decline in the ether price.
However, the rate of the second-largest cryptocurrency even rose by 2.56% after the Shanghai update, compared to Bitcoin’s modest 0.3% increase over the same period.
“Most people have been able to sell their staking ETH for a long time. The fact is that most of the ETH was locked through various DeFi platforms with such a feature, for example, Lido or Rocket Pool.
Therefore, I don’t think that the Shanghai update can significantly change the Ethereum economy,” stated the head of the Mantle product under the pseudonym Jacbc.eth.
Despite this, many firms plan to withdraw substantial amounts of ETH from staking, such as the Kraken exchange, which will withdraw deposits from all US users due to regulatory pressure.
Previously, the Ethereum Foundation had doubled the bounty program for vulnerability discovery to $500,000.