Waiting in line: Ethereum validators that have put in withdrawal requests in the wake of last week’s Shanghai upgrade will have to wait around 17 days to get their staked ether (ETH) back, according to data from the blockchain analytics firm Nansen.
As per Nansen, there are a total of 575,359 validators on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning roughly 5% of validators are seeking to leave Ethereum’s staking process. Validators are accountable for proposing and adding blocks of transactions to the Ethereum blockchain as part of the validation process. In exchange, they are eligible for rewards of newly minted ETH and a share of associated transactions fees.
But for those who have chosen to depart, there’s a long process that contributes to the length of the queue. According to Niklas Polk, an analyst at Nansen, validators first send a voluntary message to exit, which involves a 25-minute lag. After that, they enter the exit queue, which presently stands at 11.7 days. When they move out of this stage, they encounter a withdrawal delay of roughly 27 hours. Finally, withdrawals are processed and placed after an additional 4.25 days.
So, if a validator decides to join the exit queue today, they will have to wait 17 days to get their ETH back. On the other hand, partial withdrawals take only around 4.27 days to process and are automatically transferred to validator addresses if their unstaking credentials are set up. A partial withdrawal entails the validator only withdrawing a portion of their staking rewards, while keeping their staked ETH as part of the validating process.
The developers responsible for the Ethereum blockchain have been praised for the mostly successful transition of the network to a fully functional proof-of-stake network from the energy-intensive proof-of-work system it initially used, and which Bitcoin still uses.
But the lengthy Ethereum exit queue serves as a reminder of how long it can take to regain the crypto at a time of high demand – especially in the volatile digital asset markets where prices can and often do shift by double-digit percentages in a single day.
Additionally, stakers over the last 24 hours have added more ETH to the chain than there have been withdrawal requests, leading to a net 86,000 ETH staked, or 0.3% increase in staked ETH – in spite of all the withdrawals that have already taken place. This suggests that since the upgrade, stakers have gained faith in Ethereum’s staking process.
(The net ETH staked figure does not take into account tokens due to be reclaimed by exiting validators that are still in the queue.)