As it takes longer and longer to withdraw from staking on Ethereum (ETH), Vitalik Buterin has stepped in to give his opinion. What does he say?
Vitalik Buterin weighs in on the debate surrounding staking on Ethereum (ETH)
For several weeks now, we have been regularly reporting on the growing queue to withdraw ETH from staking on Ethereum. In recent days, this queue has accelerated, and there are now more than 2.49 million Ethers waiting their turn for an estimated 43 days:
In a since-deleted tweet, Michael Marcantonio, head of decentralized finance (DeFi) at Galaxy Digital, expressed concern on Tuesday about the direction Ethereum staking was taking:
It is not clear that a network that takes 45 days to return its assets is an appropriate candidate to propel the next era of global financial markets.
In the same tweet, he also highlighted the fact that on Solana (SOL), it takes two days to exit staking.
Beyond the fact that this may have fueled the “conflict” between pro-Ethereum on one side and pro-Solana on the other, Robert Sags, co-founder of layer 1 Fogo, felt that both 2 days and 45 days were too long. He went on to say that if you can withdraw money from an interest-bearing bank account more quickly, “slow banks have just beaten us in terms of user experience.”
While another user responded by pointing out that staking has nothing to do with bank funds, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, weighed in to compare leaving staking to a soldier deserting the army:
It’s more like a soldier deciding to leave the army. Staking is taking on the solemn duty of defending the blockchain. The friction associated with leaving is part of the contract. An army cannot hold if even one percent of its members can suddenly leave. This does not mean that the current design of the staking queue is optimal, but rather that if you naively reduce the constants, it makes the blockchain much less reliable from the perspective of any node that does not connect very frequently.
In addition to the snowball effect that the psychological factor can cause in the face of significant outflows, there are other points to consider. For example, although the price of ETH has barely managed to beat its all-time high (ATH) of 2021, this bull cycle could soon come to an end, which may prompt some investors to be ready to sell.
Nevertheless, 29.43% of the ETH supply is still being used to secure the network at the time of writing.
