Since the Shapella hard fork on April 12, Ether’s price has risen by around 10%.
More than 1 million ETH worth $2.1 billion have been deleted from Ethereum’s Beacon Chain in the first four days of the Shapella hard fork, and Ether has already crossed $2,100 for the first time in 11 months.
Data from http://beaconcha.in shows that the 1.03 million ETH were withdrawn as a result of the 473,7000 withdrawal requests, with the largest withdrawal day on April 15 (392,800 ETH).
Of the 540,000 active validators, 469,000, or nearly 87%, can now withdraw their staked ether.
While there was disagreement within the Ethereum community regarding the potential impact of Shapella on the price of Ether, the first four days had seen a 10% increase.
The results don’t come as much of a “surprise” to Lachlan Feeney, CEO of blockchain consulting and development firm Labrys, according to Cointelegraph, because many validators are re-staking Ether back into the Beacon Chain:
“Much of the stake that has been withdrawn over the last few days is actually going straight back into The Beacon Chain as validators are looking to compound their interest. So much so that net stake is currently increasing.”
Feeney noted that many early stakeholders decided to sell after what had been for some, roughly a 30-month wait, given the current socioeconomic environment.
According to Feeney, the Shapella hard fork will only benefit Ethereum in the medium to long term by boosting the amount of ether staked:
“Because Shapella is a massive de-risking event, over the medium to long-term more, not less, ETH will be staked. We anticipate that in the not too distant future, we will reach a record high of Ether being staked.”
Based on Markus Thielen, the head of research at digital asset platform Matrixport, the suspension of staking services by cryptocurrency exchange Kraken may have contributed to the increased numbers:
“It appears largely due to the Kraken’s staking business being unwound. This will only have a temporary effect as we are also seeing a significant demand from investors who now are able to stake with more visibility on the liquidity of staked positions.”
Thielen predicted that a large portion of the unstaked Ether held by Kraken would be “recycled” back into the Beacon Chain by means of other parties.
Even while Thielen anticipates the recent price surge to slow down this week due to heightened selling pressure, he is optimistic that Shapella can eventually convince more institutional investors to buy in Ethereum.
In comparison to a prediction provided by blockchain analytics startup Glassnode on April 11, which stated that only 170,000 Ether would remain unstaked following Shapella’s first week, the one million milestone signifies a 500% increase.
The amount of 1.4 million Ether that would be kept back after Shapella’s first few days was somewhat underestimated by Nansen, an on-chain analytics firm.
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