Over a million ETH worth $2.1 billion has now been withdrawn from the Beacon Ethereum chain within the first four days of the hard fork Shabela and pushed the price of Ether over $2,100 for the first time in 11 months.
Withdrawals of 1.03 million ETH came from 473,7000 withdrawal requests, with Saturday April 15th being the biggest withdrawal day at 392,800 ETH according to data from beaconcha.in.
Of the active validators, approximately 87% or 469,000 out of 540,000 are now able to withdraw their Ethereum.
Meanwhile, members of the Ethereum community were divided on Shabella's influence on the Ethereum price. The first four days produced a rally of nearly 10%.
These numbers aren't a little surprising to Lachlan Feeney. CEO of blockchain consulting and development company Labrys. Which explained that many validators are putting Ether back into the Beacon Chain: “A lot of the stake that has been withdrawn over the past few days is actually going straight back into the Beacon Chain as validators are looking to double down on their interest. So much so that the net share is currently increasing.”
Given the current macroeconomic climate. Feeney explained that many of the early stakeholders wanted to liquidate after a 30-month wait for some.
In the medium to long term. Finney believes that the Shabella hard fork will only increase the amount of Ethereum that has been staked. Which of course will only boost Ethereum at the consensus level: “Because Chabela is a massive de-risking event. In the medium to long term, Ethereum will be locked in. We expect that in the not too distant future. We will reach a record high level of staking ether.”
Markus Thieln, Head of Research at digital asset platform Matrixport, said: The shutdown of Kraken’s staking services may have contributed to the higher numbers: “This appears to be largely due to the disposal of Kraken’s staking business. This will only have a temporary effect because we are also seeing great demand from investors who are now able to take risks with more clarity on the liquidity of the stacked positions.”
Tellen said he expects a significant amount of unlocked ether to be “recycled” from Kraken to the Beacon Chain through other entities.
Thielen expects the positive price action to subside this week amid increasing selling pressure. He believes that Chabela will eventually attract more institutional investors to participate in Ethereum.
The millionth milestone represents a 500% increase from the April 11 prediction by blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode. Which estimated that only 170,000 ether would be unlocked after the first week of Chabela.
On-chain analytics company Nansen just missed the mark. It predicted that 1.4 million ether would be withdrawn after the first few days of Shabella.
