A prominent analytics firm is revealing that over one million Ethereum (ETH) has been taken out of the staking contract after the smart contract platform’s recent upgrade.
IntoTheBlock finds that 1.37 million ETH worth over $2.56 billion at time of writing has been unstaked and withdrawn following the Shapella update.
The Shapella upgrade, which allows Ethereum stakers to withdraw their staked tokens for the first time, is a portmanteau of “Shanghai” and “Capella,” two different updates that went live simultaneously. While Shanghai reinforced the protocol’s execution layer, Capella made changes to its consensus layer.
The leading analytics firm also says that 650,000 ETH worth $1.21 billion has been deposited into the staking contract after Shapella, resulting in net withdrawals of 720,000 ETH worth $1.34 billion.
The analytics firm goes on to say that Ethereum’s staking contract is witnessing a surge of ETH deposits from institutional staking providers and centralized crypto exchanges after Shapella went live.
According to IntoTheBlock, Hong Kong-based crypto exchange Huobi now accounts for 5.40% of all staked ETH, an eye-popping 800% increase from 0.60% prior to the upgrade.
Crypto exchange OKX also supersized its staking share from 0.69% before Shapella to 3.71%, an increase of over 437%. Staked.us, a staking platform catering to institutional crypto investors, witnessed its share rise by nearly 200% from 2.80% before the update to 8.25%.
Meanwhile, US-based crypto exchange Coinbase saw its staking share fall by nearly 50% after Shapella from 12.51% to 6.33%.
Says IntoTheBlock,
“Following the Ethereum Shapella upgrade, the share of deposits by staking providers has changed significantly. Most notably, we see an unexpected staking share increase for institutional staking providers and Asian centralized exchanges.”
At time of writing, Ethereum is trading for $1,866.
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