Ether holders are rushing to stake their tokens with network validators. This has pushed the deposit activity to the highest level since the Shapella upgrade last month.

In fact, the total volume of crypto-asset staked has exceeded 20 million.

The latest milestone comes a month after the much-anticipated Ethereum Shanghai upgrade that brought a record-breaking weekly inflow of Ether deposits for staking.

“It has only been a month since Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade. Since then, the total volume of $ETH staked has surpassed 20 million.”

Shanghai enabled the withdrawal of tokens previously locked up in staking contracts for the first time – a crucial step after last year’s Merge to complete the network’s transition to validating transactions through staking from an “energy extensive” mining-based system.
Such an influx appears to have been fueled by institutional staking service providers and investors reinvesting rewards after withdrawal.
An Ethereum whale, identified as an early participant in the blockchain ICO, emerged after being dormant for over two years and staked a whopping 4,032 ETH (worth nearly $7.4 million), according to Lookonchain.
Lido Finance is one of the major staking platforms that has taken center stage after the success of Shapella. It lets anyone stake any amount instead of going the traditional way of depositing directly to the mainnet, which requires a minimum deposit of 32 ETH.
The service deployed its v2 iteration on May 15th after passing an on-chain vote.
Despite being one of the largest liquid staking protocols on Ethereum, Lido had processed only 0.42% of the withdrawals so far.

The post 1 Month After Shapella Staked Ether (ETH) Exceeds 20M appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ May 19, 2023 6:11 pm