1.2m ETH staked on Kraken to be unlocked after Shanghai upgrade

About 1.2 million ETH currently staked through Kraken is waiting to be released soon after the implementation of the Shanghai upgrade next month. 

According to data from the analytics network Dune, there are just about 1,233,969 ETH currently staked through the crypto exchange network Kraken. Kraken, one of the largest exchange service providers, also provides a home for ethereum validators.

Dune analytics data indicates that the amount of ethereum staked at Kraken represents about 7.42% of the total ethereum staked through different networks and pools. The data also shows that about 38,555 ethereum validators are leveraging the Kraken network.

The stats above put Kraken at 3rd among the largest hosts of locked/staked ethereum, with the toppers being Lido and Coinbase. Lido currently hubs about 151,864 validators with about 4.86 million ETH staked through the network. As such, Lido controls at least 29.23% of the staking market share. 

Coinbase has about 64732 validators who staked over 2 million ETH. This means that the network controls 12.46% of the market share. Dune analytics data indicates that, at the moment, there are 16.62 million ethereum deposits on staking contracts with over 519 thousand network validators.

Interestingly, the total amount of ethereum liquidity staked is valued at about $24.5 billion based on current prices.

Based on reports, the over 16 million staked ethereum has remained on lock over the past six months after the ethereum merger. This is because the new ethereum platform had issues that made it impossible to unlock the tokens.

Will the staked ethereum be unlocked? 

A few months ago, crypto.news reported that Kraken had halted ETH unlocking until the completion of the Shanghai upgrade. Kraken posted a statement on the same. 

Lido, another affected network, posted a thread noting that its users would not be able to unstake after The Merge. Lido highlighted that unstaking would only become possible 6 to 12 months after the merge due to the introduction of a new fork.

Reports indicate that ethereum developers have set a date to launch the Shanghai upgrade in March. As such, investors with locked ETH in Lido, Kraken, and other networks will be able to access them in about a month. However, due to the massive release of ETH, some analysts already predict that the upgrade could cause ETH declines.