After the major upgrade to the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem launched in mid-April that enabled investors to withdraw their staked ETH, the staking returns on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap have reached record highs.
Indeed, the Ethereum staking annualized rate of return, or the interest rate for running an ETH validator, at press time, stood at 8.76%, which is a historical high since the Shanghai update introduced staking withdrawals, according to the latest data retrieved from analytics platform Token Unlocks on May 15.
Specifically, since the implementation of unstaking on the Ethereum network, investors have deposited 3.44 million ETH into ETH 2.0 contracts, whereas they have withdrawn 2.67 million ETH at a net pledge of 770.70k ETH (worth around $1.41 billion), as the recent information shows.
Also called ‘Shapella,’ the recent development on Ethereum’s blockchain has not only allowed the unlocking of billions worth of ETH but has also promised to bring about other positive aspects, such as the dropping the gas fees for developers on the platform, in an aim to make it more scalable and efficient.
Ethereum price analysis
As things stand, Ethereum is currently changing hands at the price of $1,827.92, up 1.37% in the last 24 hours, as it tries to reverse the losses of 1.50% over the previous seven days and of 13.38% during the past month, according to the data from May 15.
With the most recent results, the crypto market seems to be trying to recover from the losses suffered over the previous weeks and avoid some experts’ bleak estimates of the Ethereum price ending up in the mid-$15,000 area if the decline continues, which Finbold reported on May 12.
As it happens, it seems that the crypto community’s earlier predictions about the average price of Ethereum standing at $1,834.52 by the end of the month are materializing, and the CoinMarketCap members are currently even more bullish, eyeing $1,835.77 by May 31.
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