Staked ETH hits new high of 12.7 million ahead of August merge

What

Ethereum’s staking address for ETH 2.0 has hit a new high of 12.7 million Ether (around $24 billion) as its planned Merge approaches

Why

The Merge is a significant upgrade to move Ethereum from a proof of work (PoW) mining process to a proof of stake (PoS). This will aim to reduce Ethereum’s power consumption and speed up transaction times

What next

The Merge is slated to take place in August this year and is currently going through its testing phase

The story

In exchange for staking and helping to secure the Ethereum network, stakers are rewarded with interest paid on the ETH they deposited to Ethereum’s staking address, which is currently set at around 4.4%.

The new high hit for staking may offer some hope to holders that there is now a sizable amount of ETH that will likely not be sold in the short term to ease sell-side pressure and further price stagnation.

The crypto market will be watching the Merge closely, as its success or failure could have wide-reaching impacts on market sentiment. After the recent outages on the Solana blockchain, the death spiral of Luna and the fear and greed index showing “extreme fear” in market sentiment for Bitcoin, Ethereum’s Merge could be a source of renewed optimism for crypto markets.

The Merge has experienced numerous delays throughout its development, so developers and Eth holders alike will be hoping for an August finish line to arrive on schedule to avoid any future uncertainty.

To learn more about the Merge, check out our explainer.