In just a year, the total ETH staked has more than doubled ahead of the Merge, which is going to take place in the coming days. According to data released by Arcane research, the amount of stake ETH surged from 6.5 million to 13.4 million. This shows that there has been a strong interest in Ethereum over the last year.Â
Ethereum Staked Doubles Before ETH Merge
Ethereum investors continue to stake ETH ahead of the Merge, which is going to take place in the coming weeks of September. Despite the fact that investors cannot still withdraw their staked ETH, there have been several investors that staked 6.9 million ETH over the last year.Â
As per the report, due to the fact that staking is a high-risk thing, most ETH remained unstaked. This is also very important because it shows that there is a large number of investors that prefer to stay with their ETH in case something goes wrong with the Merge.Â
Additionally, it is still not possible to withdraw funds from the staked contract. That means that people that invested in ETH and staked their funds are receiving rewards but they cannot withdraw them. This has also pushed many holders to avoid staking their Ethereum.Â
It is also worth mentioning that the yield paid to stakers could go higher in the future. As soon as withdrawals are unlocked, there might be an outflow of ETH that was staked. This imbalance between outflow and inflow of ETH could increase the yield paid and attract more investors.Â
The Ethereum Merge is expected to take place as soon as September 15. This would allow Ethereum to become a faster and more reliable blockchain network. Between 2017 and 2022, Ethereum grew alongside Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), and many other things.Â
This has created a situation in which Ethereum became very expensive to use for normal users and for projects that required a large number of transactions and low fees. Therefore, the goal was to make Ethereum a proof of stake (PoS) digital currency. In this way, transactions can be processed faster and for lower fees.Â
Rather than having miners, Ethereum is now going to have validators. These validators would be required to stake at least 32 ETH. However, if an investor holds less than 32 ETH and wants to stake Ethereum, he would be able to do so thanks to exchanges and other services that offer users to gather funds and become validators themselves (even without reaching 32 ETH).Â
According to data shared by CoinGecko, Ethereum is being traded at around $20,110 per coin. At the same time, the virtual currency has a market capitalization of $190 billion, which makes ETH the second-largest virtual currency after Bitcoin (BTC). It is not possible to know what can happen with ETH’s price, but analysts believe that there could be a strong push higher if Ethereum reduces its supply or new issuance of coins (which could happen in the future).
