Withdrawals of staked Ethereum (ETH) are now possible as the Ethereum proof-of-stake chain has upgraded to Shapella.
Tim Beiko, an Ethereum core developer, took to Twitter about 13 hours ago, at 11.45 p.m. on April 12, to announce that withdrawals are now live on Etherscan as the Shapella upgrade has shipped.
On-chain analytics firm Lookonchain is assessing ETH withdrawals after the Shapella hard fork. It was reported a couple of hours ago that 111,378 ETH worth $216.3 million were withdrawn after withdrawals were enabled.
After the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, 111,378 $ETH($216.3M) has been withdrawn.https://t.co/O1Yr9Klk99
And @LidoFinance has withdrawn a total of 63,695 $ETH, accounting for 57.2%.https://t.co/6PMTHPUhkK
1.🧵 What you need to know about ETH withdrawals. pic.twitter.com/qjk1BwmG7g
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 13, 2023
This figure has increased, as at the time of writing, 139,948 ETH were withdrawn in 57,037 transactions, per Etherscan data.
According to Lookonchain, only 19,869 validators (713,195 ETH) are currently waiting for a full withdrawal, accounting for 3.5%. It notes that partial withdrawals were processed much faster than full withdrawals.
In a new tweet, crypto exchange Binance has announced that ETH 2.0 staking participants will be able to redeem ETH with their BETH holdings on a 1:1 basis, starting on April 19 at 8:00 UTC.
Here’s impact on ETH price
Some believe that ETH redemptions made possible by Shapella might trigger a wave of selling, which would put downward pressure on the price of Ether. Ether has a current market value of about $241 billion, second only to Bitcoin in terms of value.
ETH deposits are already outpacing withdrawals lol pic.twitter.com/TWfGhInXvV
— Tom Dunleavy (@dunleavy89) April 13, 2023
However, as it seems, deposits are outpacing withdrawals, so the impact on price is less at the moment.
At the time of writing, ETH has crossed the $2,000 mark, up 6.35% in the last 24 hours. The crypto asset is up 7.65% in the past seven days.
The market continues to watch out for future developments on the ETH price after the successful Shapella update.