Over $115 billion of ether is now staked on the Beacon Chain
The amount of ether staked on the Beacon Chain is almost 26% of its total supply, with over 980,000 individual validator stakes involved.
Following the recent rise in the price of ETH (currently at $3700), the value of the total staked assets has now exceeded $115 billion. This is a sizable portion of ETH's market cap of $446 billion — underscoring the amount of Ethereum's economic security.
In proof-of-stake networks like Ethereum, which transitioned to PoS with The Merge, economic security is crucial.
The concept here is that to attack the network, for instance, by reversing transactions or conducting a double-spend attack, an entity would need to control at least half of the total validator stake, or $57 billion. This amount represents a significant financial hurdle, making such attacks economically impractical.
The surge in ether staking was notably influenced by the Shapella upgrade in April 2023, which allowed users and validators to withdraw their staked ether, leading to an influx of over 11 million ETH being staked post-upgrade.
The introduction of liquid staking solutions like Lido and Rocket Pool has further facilitated staking by allowing for the staking of amounts less than 32 ETH and enabling the use of staked assets as collateral in DeFi. Lido Finance validators currently represent over 31% of the total ETH staked.
