The long-awaited Ethereum Shapella hard fork (Shanghai Hardfork and Capella upgrades) which was scheduled to go live in April has finally gone live.
It was executed on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet in the late hours of April 12th at epoch number 194,048. Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4895 was implemented, therefore, Ether validators now have access to their staked tokens and can now withdraw them from the Beacon Chain.
Notably, this is Ethereum’s first major upgrade since the Merge which happened in September last year, and the complete transition to Proof-of-stake (PoS). The Merge is the transition from a Proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to a PoS algorithm. The release of the staked ether is happening in batches. According to ETH block explorer beaconchai.in, 12,859 Ether was released in the first hour of the hard fork in 4,333 withdrawals.
Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global harbors almost 30% of the staked withdrawable Ether which represents the largest share. Huobi is followed at a distance by the decentralized autonomous organization PieDAO accounts for about 17.7% of the released staked Ether.
Staked ETH Withdrawals Begin in Batches
For now, almost 50% of validators from the total active 559,549 can initiate either a full or partial withdrawal.
It seems like it is mostly staked rewards that are being requested as a significant volume of withdrawals fall within the range of 2.8 to 3.2 ETH. It is however worth noting that before the Shapella upgrade, only 3,996 validators signed up to the exit queue, as per data from Rated Network Explorer.
Blockchain analytic firm Nansen stated that 7,948 validators will be granted full withdrawal access to a total of 284,622 Ether. As per several analyses, it has been discovered that the Shapella upgrade has the capacity to unlock Ether in millions, however, some mechanisms have been put in place to avoid overflooding in the market.
While the staked ETH are being withdrawn, validators performing partial withdrawal will be required to have a balance of 32 ETH to maintain their status on the network. While those completing full withdrawal will get shut out of the network.
