Ethereum staking deposits have declined slightly in recent weeks due to increased regulatory pressure and the Shapella upgrade slated for April 12.
On April 9, on-chain analytics provider Glassnode reported on the current state of the Ethereum staking ecosystem.
The data revealed that deposit activities are currently low “due to regulatory pressure and the Shanghai upgrade.”
Financial regulators in the United States have been coming down hard on crypto this year. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is adamant that Ether (ETH) is a security and has cracked down on staking despite there being no official legislation from Congress classifying ETH as such.
The Ethereum network will undergo a long-awaited upgrade on April 12. The Shapella hard fork, also known as the Shanghai hard fork, will enable the phased release of ETH staked on the Beacon Chain.
These two factors have caused the dip in Ethereum staking deposits, according to Glassnode.
The firm also noted that major centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken have lost a lot of market share to the liquid staking platform Lido.
“As the dust settled between the three giants, it was Lido who emerged victorious, continuing to dominate deposit inflows as of present,” it noted.
Deposit trends by staking providers have exhibited a clear shift over time with Kraken, Binance and Coinbase jousting for deposit allocations across the Beacon Chain's early days.As the dust settled between the three giants, it was Lido who emerged victorious,...
— glassnode (@glassnode) April 9, 2023
Lido currently accounts for almost a third of the total amount of ETH staked. This equates to around $11 billion from the 5.9 million ETH on the platform.
Centralized exchanges such as Coinbase take a hefty 25% commission from the staking rewards, with Coinbase’s commissions being even higher for other assets such as Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL).
Lido takes a 10% commission and offers the potential of earning additional yields on DeFi platforms through its staking token Lido Staked ETH (stETH). This explains the shift over time as savvy stakers switched to more profitable platforms.
Analysts have predicted that liquid staking platforms such as Lido will get a boost when ETH is released from the Beacon Chain after the Shapella upgrade.
According to the Ethereum metrics tracking platform Ultrasound.Money, there is currently 18.1 million ETH staked in total currently valued at around $33.7 billion and represeting 15% of the entire supply.
After the Shapella upgrade, this will be slowly released for withdrawal in the weeks and months that follow.
