With the latest Shapella upgrade executed, developers have again demonstrated that itâs possible to swap out key parts of a $231 billion rocket mid flight. The last time they pulled off such a feat was in September with âthe merge.â
Unfortunately, the same canât necessarily be said for the 47% of Ethereum network validators that donât have the correct validator credentials.Â
Per data drawn from Nansen analytics, 260,000 validators holding 672,000 Ethereum on the network have yet to hear the good Shapella word.
This also means those stakers, who account for approximately $1.3 billion at todayâs prices, wonât be able to pull any of their money out of the system.Â
Well, not unless they update their credentials.
These credentials will be automatically updated via a network scan, but it adds extra wait time for anyone relying on these nodes.Â
One estimate from an analyst at investment firm Galaxy, said it could âtake about 100 hours for the network to run through and update the withdrawal credentials for the entire validator set of Ethereum.âÂ
Four days isnât that long to wait, but itâs just another barrier to any serious bearish impulses after the upgrade.
Included in that same network scan is also a list of which validators want to execute a âpartial exitâ or a âfull exit.â
A partial exit is one in which a validator signals that they would like to withdraw their rewards for having staked. The network would define these rewards as anything above that initial 32 ETH deposit. This kind of exit differs from a full exit in that the validator only takes the rewards and then continues validating away.Â
Full exit-ers are a little more serious about their departure. They grab their rewards, the initial stake, and then shut down the validator.Â
Right now, Nansen shows that there are more than 21,600 validators that have signalled for a âfull exit,â along with 775,898 Ethereum.Â
It seems like a lot, but one key detail here revolves around the recent action against Kraken to shutter its staking service in the United States. When examining the entities that have signaled that they will exit the network, the San Francisco-based crypto exchange makes up a whopping 70% of that demand.
Once withdrawn and returned to users, those users have a few options.
Naturally, some will sell; after potentially waiting as long as two years, even the most enthusiastic ETH heads will likely reward themselves for their steadfastness.
Others, though, may be exiting staking so that they can finally update their validator set up, which may very well be the case given the number of solo-stakers and hobbyists participating.
Then thereâs the question of what Lido Finance and Rocketpool and the myriad other liquid staking platforms will do.
Regardless of what happens, both platforms have signaled that the upgrading credentials for stakers wonât be an issue.
Lido announced its first credential update was a success yesterday and RocketPoolâs Atlas upgrade makes credential rotation a cinch for users.
So far, Shanghai appears to have been yet another resounding win for Ethereum.
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