Ethereum staking enters the institutional asset management era as the queue grows.

Right now, if you want to become an Ethereum validator directly, you’ll need to wait over a month in line.

As of July 22, approximately 2.5 million ETH remain in the Ethereum staking entry queue, with an estimated waiting time of over 43 days. In contrast, the exit queue waiting time is only a few minutes, nearly negligible.

Looking purely at the numbers, there is no doubt that increasing ETH staking is siphoning away circulating supply.

More noteworthy than the growth in staking volume is that the queue is beginning to pose a liquidity efficiency issue. For ETH treasury firms and institutions opting for native staking, a wait time of over 40 days means a significant amount of assets is temporarily unable to earn staking rewards, requiring a reassessment of asset allocation, liquidity planning, and opportunity cost.

Ultimately, as ETH becomes more deeply integrated into balance sheets, the challenges surrounding staking shift from “how to get more people involved” to a more traditional and complex set of asset management issues.

Ethereum's current high staking rate did not form suddenly at any single point in time.

In 2023, the Shapella (Shanghai + Capella) upgrade enabled staking withdrawals, allowing validators to reclaim their staked principal and rewards at the protocol level, thereby completing a full lifecycle—entry, operation, and exit—for ETH staking. Since then, the derivatives market based on LSD has expanded rapidly, driving continuous growth in the ETH staking rate.

As of the time of writing, the amount of ETH staked has surpassed 40 million, equivalent to approximately $140 billion at current prices, accounting for over 33% of the total supply—a significant increase from around 10% just a few years ago, setting a new all-time high.

In other words, more than 1 out of every 3 ETH is currently staked.

Under the premise of record-high collateralization rates, the persistently long entry queue has revealed a new issue.

It is well known that Ethereum’s entry and exit queues are essentially rate-limiting mechanisms designed to protect consensus stability. New ETH cannot enter the set of validators without limit, nor can exits occur in concentrated bursts over short periods. The protocol determines the number of ETH that can be processed per epoch based on the current validator size; when the volume of funds requesting entry or exit exceeds this capacity, a queue forms.

From this perspective, the 2.5 million ETH waiting to enter the queue primarily indicates that market demand for staking capacity far exceeds the rate at which the protocol can currently release it—this may include new long-term capital entering the market, treasury firms deploying existing holdings, staking providers adjusting validator structures, and institutions transferring ETH from custodial accounts into the staking system.

Therefore, this sends a clear signal: at least for now, the amount of capital willing to enter the staking system far exceeds the amount actively withdrawing from the validator set.

This differs significantly from the staking logic at the initial launch of the Beacon Chain.

Early ETH staking was a network participation mechanism geared toward technical users, independent validators, and long-term Ethereum supporters, where participants ran nodes, maintained the network, and assumed technical risks in exchange for protocol rewards.

With the rise of liquid staking, it has gradually become a product for ordinary token holders to earn on-chain returns. For example, exchange staking, staking-as-a-service, and staking pools have lowered technical barriers. Liquid staking protocols such as Lido and Rocket Pool have further enhanced the liquidity of staked funds, allowing users to receive liquid staking tokens like stETH and rETH after staking ETH. These tokens can not only be transferred and traded but also used in lending, liquidity pools, and other DeFi protocols.

Today, as vast amounts of ETH enter corporate treasuries, fund products, and professional custody systems, staking is undoubtedly entering its third phase, shifting focus from “who can participate in staking” to “how to manage large-scale ETH.”

Of course, the institutionalization referred to here does not mean that early staking was entirely dominated by retail users, nor does it mean that institutions will replace individual users; rather, the focus of market discussions is shifting:

Previously, the focus was on how individual users could earn staking rewards; now, the focus is on how staking becomes a standardized treasury management capability once hundreds of thousands or even millions of ETH enter corporate balance sheets.

The emergence of ETH treasury companies is making this change more tangible.

Because the core logic of the Bitcoin treasury company is to continuously accumulate BTC through financing and capital market operations, increasing the amount of Bitcoin per share; however, for an ETH treasury company, holding assets is not the end goal of the strategy.

After all, BTC itself has no native staking yield; holders seeking additional returns typically need to introduce lending, custody, derivatives, or other counterparty risks, whereas ETH can directly participate in Ethereum’s consensus mechanism and earn protocol rewards without selling assets.

This adds an additional layer of operational flexibility to the ETH treasury, meaning that in addition to deciding how much ETH to purchase, it is also necessary to determine how those ETH assets should be deployed.

BitMine's actions are a concentrated expression of this institutional language.

According to its latest disclosed data, as of July 19, BitMine held a total of 5,777,468 ETH, accounting for approximately 4.8% of ETH’s total supply, of which 4.917 million ETH were staked, representing 85% of its total ETH holdings and valued at approximately $9.2 billion.

Based on the ETH price at the time and BitMine’s own seven-day annualized staking yield of 2.67%, the company expects to generate approximately $247 million in staking income annually; if all of its ETH is ultimately staked, the annualized reward size could reach approximately $290 million.

More noteworthy is the speed at which this number is changing.

In early February, BitMine had approximately 2.8975 million ETH staked, accounting for about 67% of its total holdings at the time; by mid-July, its staked amount had increased to approximately 4.9172 million ETH. This means that in less than six months, BitMine deployed over 2 million additional ETH, raising its staking coverage from about two-thirds to 85%.

This indicates that Tom Lee and BitMine are rapidly staking their held ETH, transforming it from a mere cryptocurrency asset waiting for price appreciation into an on-chain foundational asset with native yield-generating capabilities.

For retail investors, the staking rate may simply be a yield option, but for BitMine, it is becoming a treasury operational metric alongside ETH holdings, book value per share, and financing costs.

Meanwhile, BitMine has launched its proprietary institutional-grade staking platform, MAVAN, to serve the company’s own ETH treasury, with future plans to provide staking infrastructure to institutional investors, custodians, and ecosystem partners. (Learn more: “Hong Kong Ethereum Insights: When the ‘World Computer’ Meets ‘Yield-Bearing Assets’—How Do Two Types of ETH Resonate?”)

This means that staking serves at least three roles for BitMine: first, it adds an ETH-denominated yield for long-term holders; second, staking rewards can be reinvested to increase the amount of ETH held in the treasury; and third, when the self-built validator capabilities are opened to external users, the staking infrastructure itself could become a service business.

SharpLink takes this logic a step further by extending it from native staking to active yield management. For SharpLink, base staking rewards are just the starting point—some of the staked ETH can also be allocated to on-chain yield funds, deployed into DeFi strategies such as liquidity provision and lending.

The changes in Lido V3 occur at the infrastructure level. Previously, users and institutions primarily accessed a unified liquid staking pool; now, institutions can use more independent staking vaults to independently select node operators, fee structures, and risk parameters, while still retaining the option to access stETH liquidity. This means liquid staking is evolving from a standardized product into a more isolated, customizable institutional-grade infrastructure.

Therefore, competition among ETH treasury companies in the future may not only be about who holds more ETH, but also about who can manage these ETH at lower costs, with higher uptime, and more robust risk controls.

From this perspective, ETH is also transitioning from a cryptocurrency asset waiting for price appreciation to one that requires ongoing operation.

As of the time of writing, the Ethereum network-wide staking APR is approximately 2.64%. Frankly, this level is not particularly outstanding compared to some DeFi products, and the base yield may be further diluted as more ETH participates in staking.

However, institutional demand for staking cannot be understood solely by the level of yield—staking reduces their opportunity cost of holding ETH long-term.

For short-term investors, an annualized yield of 2% to 3% is unlikely to offset the price volatility of ETH itself. However, for treasury firms, funds, or large addresses that have already decided to hold ETH long-term, the issue is this: since ETH is already on the balance sheet, they must continue acquiring more ETH without sacrificing their price exposure to ETH (see further reading: “When Wall Street’s ETH Starts Earning Interest: How BlackRock’s ETHB Reflects Ethereum’s Shift Toward Asset Characteristics”).

This is easy to understand: for an ordinary user holding 100 ETH, a 2.6% yield may not seem significant; however, for a treasury company holding millions of ETH, the same yield generates substantial absolute income, which, through long-term reinvestment, gradually affects the amount of ETH per share.

This is also one of the key differences between ETH and BTC in terms of treasury narratives.

Therefore, once ETH enters an institutional balance sheet, the treasury department is not managing a static position, but rather an on-chain asset that can be continuously deployed, accounted for, and adjusted.

As institutional participation increases, native staking yields may also serve as the benchmark return for the entire ETH asset ecosystem.

This is easy to understand: for example, in the future, when a DeFi strategy promises returns of 5%, 8%, or even higher, institutions will need to compare not simply “with return” versus “without return,” but rather how much additional return it generates above the native staking yield of approximately 2.6%, and what additional risks it entails.

Lending, liquidity market making, structured products, and re-staking strategies must all demonstrate that their risk-reward profiles are justified relative to this baseline yield. From this perspective, the next phase of staking’s importance lies not only in how much ETH it delivers to holders, but also in its emerging role as the foundational benchmark for evaluating other on-chain strategies.

However, it cannot be simply regarded as Ethereum’s “risk-free rate,” as stakers must bear risks such as ETH price volatility, validator downtime, node failures, and potential slashing; participating through a service provider adds operational and custodial risks; and further entering DeFi multiplies these risks as more protocol and strategy layers are added.

In addition, a higher staking rate is not solely beneficial; if new funds become concentrated primarily in the hands of a few custodial firms,托管机构, liquid staking protocols, and node operators, it could exacerbate centralization among validators, cloud service providers, and jurisdictions.

Thus, as staking evolves from a network participation mechanism into an institutional asset allocation tool, Ethereum must address not only how to accommodate more capital, but also how to maintain a balance between capital efficiency, institutional needs, and decentralization.

Overall, the evolution of staking—from the initial Beacon Chain requirement of 32 ETH per validator, to liquid staking protocols lowering entry barriers, and now to treasury companies, self-operated validator networks, and institutional on-chain yield funds—reflects a fundamental shift in how the market understands ETH.

It was originally a mechanism for participating in network consensus, later became a tool for ordinary users to earn on-chain rewards, and is now beginning to enter corporate balance sheets, custodial systems, and professional yield management frameworks.

For these long-term holders, a yield of 2% to 3% may not be impressive.

But as long as ETH is no longer just sitting idle in wallets or custodial accounts waiting for price appreciation—instead, it can participate in network security, earn protocol rewards, continuously reinvest, and maintain a degree of liquidity—it will help accelerate its adoption as a foundational asset for other financial strategies.

This is also the new challenge for ETH.