- Recently, the proportion of the ETH supply that was staked increased to an all-time high of 27.95%.
At 27.95%, the percentage of the ETH +1.13% supply that was staked achieved a record high. This follows a small decline two weeks prior, on July 21, when it fell from 27.58% to 26.82% by 0.76 percentage points in a single day.
This number has not only recovered since then, but it has even eclipsed earlier highs. Interestingly, since the launch of the ETH ETFs, the percentage of ETH invested has increased by 1.9%.
What’s intriguing is that ETH’s staking trajectory has disconnected from its price performance, much like the pattern in the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network that was covered in the preceding section.
Since reaching its peak of over $4,090 in March, the price of ETH has dropped by nearly 30% to $2,900 as of this writing. But in the same time frame, the amount of ETH staked went from 26% to roughly 28%, an increase of about 2%.
That 2% rise in staked ETH is currently worth almost $7 billion, given that there are currently 120.25 million ETH in circulation.
Liquid staking and restaking procedures are directly impacted by this steady rise in ETH staked.
As of this writing, the TVL of the liquid staking industry has grown by 60% annually, from $32.68 billion to $52.27 billion. More astonishingly, within that same time frame, the TVL of the liquid restaurant industry increased by more than 1,200%, from $1.34 billion to $18.65 billion.
Taking a closer look at some of the best performers, Eigenlayer’s TVL increased more than tenfold from $1.4 billion at the start of 2024 to $15.97 billion at the end of July.
Renzo and EtherFi, meanwhile, have grown at an exponential rate. The TVL of the former increased from $10.45 million to $1.65 billion, a factor of almost 158. EtherFi’s TVL increased from $98.24 million to $6.14 billion, a 62-fold increase.
The largest ETH liquid staking protocol, Lido Finance, has a governance token called LDO +4.51%, which has made an interesting case. An increase in the percentage of ETH staked has not benefited the LDO token, whose price has dropped by 50% in 2024 thus far, shedding over $930 million in market value. The lack of a fee switch, buybacks, or other direct value accrual mechanism in LDO, which makes it a governance token, suggests that LDO is not directly benefiting from the operations or expansion of the Lido protocol.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
