ETH Unstaking Wait Time Hits Record High, Ethereum Holders Face a 'Call Each Other Fools' Moment?

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily（@OdailyChina）

Author｜Wenser（@wenser 2010 ）

As ETH price rebounded above $3800 and then fell back above $3500, ETH officially entered the "holders calling each other fools moment"—on one hand, institutions and listed companies continue to increase their ETH holdings, either holding for price appreciation or establishing strategic reserves; on the other hand, the ETH POS unstaking wait time has exceeded 11 days, breaking a historical record, with the total amount of ETH waiting to be unstaked exceeding 637,000, compared to about 321,000 ETH waiting to be staked, only about 50% of the total unstaked ETH. The market is thus in panic over institutions unstaking to sell, but is this really the case? Odaily Planet Daily will analyze the main market views in this article for readers' reference.

Behind the record high ETH unstaking wait time: After 7 months, ETH returns above $3800

According to OKX market data, ETH price once broke through $3800 this week, rising to $3858.88. In contrast, the last time ETH price was above $3800 was 7 months ago, around December 19, 2024.

The rebound in ETH price naturally stirred the crypto market, with many whales, institutions, and even retail investors who previously bought ETH at the bottom choosing to take profits, leading to a new high in ETH unstaking volume and naturally increasing the unstaking wait time.

According to the latest data from validatorqueue website, as of July 24, the total amount of ETH waiting to be unstaked is 637,450, with the wait time extending from about 9 days to 11 days and 2 hours; the total amount of ETH waiting to be staked is about 321,000, with a market wait time of about 5 days and 14 hours.

In addition, the total amount of ETH staked is currently about 35.6 million, accounting for about 29.46% of the total ETH, with an APR yield of about 3%.

Apart from the overall information, what's worth mentioning separately is the unstaking wait time, sweep delay time, node validator queue, and 7-day staking APR yield.

First, in terms of unstaking wait time, on July 24, it reached a historical high of 11.13 days; in contrast, the previous historical high was on January 5, 2024. According to crypto KOL Jason Chen (@jason_chen 998), at that time Celsius urgently needed money for bankruptcy liquidation, instantly unstaking over 500,000 ETH, with a wait time as high as 5.6 days.

But unlike then, there was not enough ETH staking demand at that time, with an ETH staking wait time of 0 days; now, this number is about 5.67 days, which fully indicates that the market's ETH staking demand is still extremely strong.

ETH unstaking wait time

Second, the sweep delay time, which requires a brief explanation of the sweep action, refers to how long it takes for node staking funds to be withdrawn to the corresponding address after passing the exit queue. According to the above image information, this time is currently about 9.5 days. In other words, the market still needs to wait for some time to face the real "selling pressure test."

Third, in terms of node validator queue data, in the past week, the number of validators exiting the queue has grown exponentially. On July 24 alone, the number of ETH exited by node validators exceeded 640,000, compared to 326,800 ETH entered by node validators. Here we borrow the analysis of crypto KOL @0x_Todd and related information from the validatorqueue website to explain. In short, currently, each Epoch (32 blocks, each block takes 12 seconds to produce) can add/remove up to 8 nodes. Calculating based on 32 ETH per node (the current ETH staking node threshold), that is 256 ETH/epoch in the above figure, thus calculating the overall unstaking wait time and staking queue wait time. Subsequently, with the Prague upgrade, the ETH upper limit for a single node deposit has increased from 32 to 2048 ETH. With the increase in large nodes, the staking and unstaking times will be greatly shortened.

Node validator queue quantity

Finally, there's the 7-day APR yield change of ETH staking. Overall, the ETH staking yield shows a gradual downward trend, which is consistent with the increase in ETH total supply and staking total, thus diluting the staking yield. From 5.2% in early June 2023, the data has now dropped to 3.01%. Of course, compared to other cryptocurrencies, ETH's POS staking yield is still a rare "steady income," which is also the "business strategy" of many listed companies aiming to become the "ETH version of Strategy"—Sharplink Gaming officially announced yesterday that its Ethereum holdings are 360,807, and it has generated 567 ETH in profits through staking.

ETH staking 7-day APR yield data

For more detailed data, readers can directly query on https://beaconcha.in/.

Exploring the reasons behind large-scale ETH unstaking: Institutional actions or Aave platform's loop loan turmoil?

Regarding the reasons behind the large-scale ETH unstaking, the mainstream views in the market mainly include the following 3:

Reason one: Institutional profit-taking

According to monitoring, since ETH broke through $3000 on July 11, ETH has been continuously flowing from HTX to Binance, with a cumulative inflow of 320,600 so far, totaling about $1.123 billion at the current average price, with an average transfer price of $3504. Other institutions like Abraxas Capital Mgmt have also redeemed their stakes.

Reason two: Aave platform's loop loan turmoil

According to on-chain data analyst Ai Yi, citing analysis by crypto blogger darkpool, the batch unstaking of 620,000 ETH may be related to the surge in borrowing rates caused by large withdrawals of ETH deposits on the Aave platform.

The specific reason is: the large withdrawal of Aave ETH deposits in a short time caused the borrowing rate to surge, loop loan players went from profiting from the interest spread to losing, forced to redeem stETH to deleverage, leading to the current situation. Aave ETH borrowing APR once surged to 10%, Lido stETH exit wait time has extended to 21 days (normally within a week); on-chain stETH exchange to ETH still has a discount of nearly 0.4%. Regarding the implementation of loop loans, Aave's collateral rate for ETH is 93%, meaning arbitrage players can even use up to 14x leverage to obtain interest spread profits, with an annualized return on principal of 7% under normal circumstances.

In other words, ETH's rise led to massive borrowing of ETH on the Aave platform, causing borrowing rates to surge; loop loan players found their leveraged interest spread turned into leveraged losses,不得不赎回 stETH 以降杠杆，由此使得 ETH 质押需求激增。关于这一原因更为详细的解释，可参考 Odaily星球日报编译 Galaxy 相关文章《价值 19 亿美元 ETH 集体排队解质押的真正原因竟然是......》。

Reason three: Institutional-level accumulation demand

This reason is the author's personal speculation.

According to SoSoValue data, on July 22, the total net inflow of Ethereum spot ETF was $534 million, the third-highest historical data. Combined with the recent "ETH version of Strategy" competition attracting囤币需求 from上市公司及机构 like SBET, BMNR, and The Ether Machine, the unstaking of hundreds of thousands of ETH is undoubtedly the work of large ETH holding clusters, with a significant possibility that部分资金将用于 ETH 的场外 OTC 及交易所流入.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, address 0x8eE previously increased holdings by 32,368 ETH (worth $116 million) through FalconX. Since July 19, this address has accumulated 138,345 ETH (worth $503 million), with an average price of $3,644; a whale/institution囤积 ETH through Kraken today increased holdings by 8,223 ETH (worth $29.4 million). Since July 14, this address has累计囤积 58,156 ETH (worth $211 million), with an average price of $3,564.

In summary, ETF net inflows and ETH strategic reserve demands provide an outlet for large-scale ETH unstaking, and the market demand for ETH remains strong.

Conclusion: The market enters the "ETH holders calling each other fools moment"

Unlike the market at the end of June and early July, the crypto market has now entered the "calling each other fools moment," especially for ETH holders, this situation is particularly显著.

Unlike the previous one-sided "ETH price持续疲软"时市场对 ETH 的轻蔑调笑或"ETH price逐步上涨"时 E 卫兵们的扬眉吐气，随着 BTC 大盘冲破历史新高后回调至 12 万美元下方，市场再次进入分歧状态，正如此刻分列 ETH 解除质押阵营与待质押阵营的人们一样。在特朗普的"关税大棒"逐步落地的现在，包括 ETH 在内的山寨币能否牛市继续，或许将在 8 月初迎来阶段性的审判。

Take profits or continue to rise?