Since the end of October, the amount of ether locked is increasing.
More than 2 million ETH are waiting to exit staking and 1.2 million are looking to enter.
Currently, the Ethereum network maintains a queue of more than 2 million ethers (ETH) pending deposit withdrawal from the staking system, while about 1.2 million are waiting to enter.
That trend, in which the volume destined to exit exceeds that which seeks to enter, has been registered since the end of Julyas reported by CriptoNoticias.
However, the subsequent evolution of the system did not advance in a single direction.
Since the end of last August, Ethereum went from having around 1.1 million validators to registering around 1 million currently. They are some 100,000 fewer validators in approximately three months.
In parallel, the total amount of ether in staking started to rise slightly as of the end of October (35.7 million ether deposited at the close of this note), as can be seen in the following chart (validators with horizontal bars and locked ether with the blue line):
That combination, even in a context of greater pressure to withdraw funds, means that there is more ETH locked in fewer nodes, something that, if consolidated in the long term, could lead to a greater concentration.
The question that arises is: how is it possible for staking to increase, while more ETH waits to come out than comes in? The most feasible answer is that it is not a “leak” from staking, but rather a internal restructuring of the nodes.
A developer’s view: consolidating is not alarming
An Ethereum developer analyzed this situation and provided an explanation for what is happening in the network staking:
The validator count is going down and the total staked ETH is going up. This is an intended feature, not a bug. Consolidation involves leaving with one validator and transferring your entire balance to another. Consolidations improve withdrawal times, state management, and validator efficiency. The number of validators, by itself, does not indicate any alarming event or provide useful information for operating in the market.
Ethereum developer.
Their position suggests that the recent drop could respond to consolidation processes: operators reducing their total number of validators to maintain fewer nodes with higher balances.
This mechanism would, according to the developer, make the operation more efficient and reduce the load on the network.
Another hypothesis that reinforces the developer’s reading is that Pectra, the latest Ethereum update, raised the maximum limit of deposit per validator to 2,048 ETH.
This change allows greater amounts of ether to be concentrated in fewer nodes, so the total number of validators could respond to an operational adjustment after the update.
However, the evolution of this trend requires monitoring and will be key to determining whether consolidation maintains a healthy balance or results in an unwanted increase in concentration.