After the long-anticipated upgrade that has allowed validators to withdraw their staked tokens, the Ethereum (ETH) network has recently surpassed a major milestone in deposit contract balance thanks to the soaring interest in staking.
Indeed, users have deposited more than 4.4 million ETH since April 12, surpassing $40 billion in deposit contract balance following the Shanghai upgrade, according to the data shared by cryptocurrency analytics platform CryptoRank on May 23.
As the chart demonstrates, the Ethereum deposit contract balance on May 23 stood at 22.6 million ETH or $41.1 billion, demonstrating a sharp move upward since the introduction of the critical feature that was not included during Ethereum’s transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus after the Merge upgrade.
Record-breaking returns
Earlier, Finbold reported on the record-high staking returns on the second-largest crypto asset by market capitalization, as its staking annualized rate of return, or the interest rate for running an ETH validator, stood at 8.76% as of May 15 (8.66% by press time).
Since the implementation of unstaking on the Ethereum network, investors have deposited 4.68 million ETH into ETH 2.0 contracts, whereas they have withdrawn 2.83 million ETH, according to the recent information retrieved from the analytics platform Token Unlocks.
Ethereum price analysis
In the meantime, Ethereum was at press time changing hands at the price of $1,817, recording a decrease of 2.08% in the last 24 hours but a 0.56% gain across the previous seven days as it tries to come back from the 1.30% drop over the past month, as per data on May 24.
Earlier, Ethereum looked to be gearing up for a rally to $2,000 after breaking above the crucial $1,825 area, which crypto market analyst Michaël van de Poppe said the digital asset had to hold for a bullish continuation. Right now, however, Ethereum is back below this level.
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