For the first time, the portion of ether supply staked on the Ethereum ETH +2.59% network has surpassed a quarter of the supply.

This comes almost a year following the Ethereum Shapella upgrade, with the ether supply exceeding 30.1 million ETH, valued at about $73 billion.

When including ether awaiting staking in the network’s queue, the amount of staked ETH exceeds 25% of the supply, represented by 942,023 individual validator stakes.

Ether staking surges post-Shapella

Ether staking surged following Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade in April 2023 — enabling users and validators the flexibility to withdraw their staked ether on the network for the first time. There has been a net flow of 10.25 million ETH staked since the upgrade.

The availability of liquid staking solutions like Lido and Rocket Pool has also made the process easier, significantly contributing to the increase — enabling staking of less than 32 ETH while unlocking the value of staked assets for use as collateral in DeFi.

However, the staking rewards on offer have declined considerably, with increased staking participation generally leading to lower per-staker rewards. Staking rewards rate declined from a peak of 8.6% post-Shapella to under 4% now.

Lido dominates ether staking

Lido Finance validators currently account for more than 31% of the ETH stakes, leading to prior concerns that the concentration of staked ether with a single service could potentially affect the network’s decentralization and security.

However, users have the option to move to alternative staking solutions, similar to miners switching mining pools in proof-of-work blockchains.

Following Lido, the staking service provided by the centralized crypto exchange Coinbase occupies second place, accounting for 14% of ether staked, while Binance ranks third with 4%.