• Ethereum successfully implemented the Shapella upgrade on mainnet on Wednesday.
• ETH has had a surprising reaction to the historical upgrade with 73,214 ETH withdrawn so far.
• Withdrawals are working, seeing ~45 ETH being withdrawn per block, however ETH has been trading flat and is currently at $1,913.
Shapella Upgrade Activated: Ethereum Reacts to Staking Withdrawals
The Shapella (Shanghai and Capella) upgrade hit Ethereum mainnet on Wednesday at 11:27 PM UTC, marking the full implementation of the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism on Ethereum. Since then, ETH has been trading flat and is currently at $1,913.
Staking Withdrawals Enabled
ETH staking withdrawals were enabled on Wednesday at 11:27 PM UTC and since then 73,214 ETH have been distributed among 27,181 withdrawals according to beaconcha.in. Currently 19,621 validators out of 567,209 are waiting to exit the ETH staking program fully while 566 validators have already exited making up 0.1% of the total validators. Huobi is reported as largest entity with 39776 ETH withdrawal capacity followed by PieDAO’s 27270 and Kraken’s 19616 ETH respectively.
Potential Selling Impacts
As withdrawals speed up and more validators can exit the staking program soon enough ETH may suffer from potential selling due to unlocked funds being injected back into circulating supply resulting in market liquidity pressures over price stability for short term time frames .
Why This Matters?
The Shapella upgrade marks a significant milestone in Ethereum’s history that now enables users to enter and exit their staking programs whenever they want without locking up large amounts of funds for extended periods of time which was not possible before this upgrade was live .
Conclusion
Overall , The Shapella Upgrade is one of the largest upgrades in Ethereum’s history . It provides more freedom for users in terms of entering or exiting their staked positions while also providing an increased level of security given its implementation within a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism .