A growing number of validators moving to withdraw funds has caused a pronounced spike in the staked ether (ETH) exit queue.
Stakers must now wait for up to 45 days until their ETH becomes available, the longest delay in over two years.
The number of staked ETH in the exit queue jumped 60% yesterday, rising from just over one million ($5.7 billion) to over two and a half million ($11.7 billion). This is according to data from the Ethereum Validator Queue dashboard.
The amount of staked ETH in the exit queue is now worth over $11.7 billion.
Rush (to queue) for the exit
The sudden spike in queued ETH is down to Kiln’s “orderly exit of all of its Ethereum (ETH) validators.”
Announced yesterday, the “precautionary measure” follows the theft of $41 million worth of staked solana from a wallet operated by Kiln.
The funds belonged to SwissBorg, for whom Kiln acted as “staking partner.”
Read more: SwissBorg CEO blames $41M loss on staking partner Kiln
Anthony Sassano, founder of Ethereum ecosystem newsletter The Daily Gwei, was keen to “get ahead of the fud,” and is confident that Kiln’s withdrawals will likely be restaked under a new setup.
The volume of ETH waiting to be unstaked has been growing for the last two months. The growth in pending withdrawals coincides with ETH’s mid-July pump from around $2,500 to almost $5,000 by late August.
Despite the enormous quantity of ETH in the exit queue, the figure represents just 7% of the total staked. 35 million ETH, valued at $155 billion, currently secures the largest proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.
Validator funny business
Yesterday, as well as the spike in queued ETH, a “mass slashing event” of Ethereum validators took place.
Slashing is a security mechanism in the network’s PoS model whereby validators operating incorrectly are subject to lose a portion of their staked ETH.
According to the write-up from the EthStaker page to support home stakers, the slashings “were caused by operator error.” The slashing appears to be due to “conflicting attestations” on Ankr nodes.
Read more: Solana validators play delay games — Toly wants them punished
Validators were also accused of playing games on Solana. The blockchain’s co-founder Anatoly “Toly” Yakovenko called for punishment for validators who delay slots, steal rewards, and slow down the network.
