Ethereum validators up 30% in a year, driven by institutional adoption

Ethereum validators recorded significant growth during the past year, highlighting the continued institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies.

The number of Ethereum validators increased by more than 30% during the past year, exceeding one million for the first time in June 2024, up from 824,300 in September 2023, according to a research report from Flipside Crypto shared with Cointelegraph.

The rise in validators is attributed to growing institutional interest, spurred by developments in the restaking and liquid staking sectors, said Carlos Mercado, a data scientist at Flipside Crypto.

He told Cointelegraph:

“The rise of liquid staking and more recently restaking has enticed institutions interested in both immediate liquidity (i.e., circumventing the withdrawal periods of Beacon Chain via Liquid Staked tokens) and enhanced capital efficiency (i.e., leverage) from restaking.”

Restaking protocols enable validators and stakers to restake liquid staking derivative tokens like Lido Staked ETH (STETH) and RocketPool’s rETH to secure and validate other networks. These assets can also be deployed in other decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to earn additional yield.

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Staked Ether growth driven by Shanghai upgrade and Ethereum ETFs

The total among of staked Ether (ETH) increased by more than 27% in the past year, surpassing 34.7 million staked ETH for the first time in September.

The report attributes this growth to the Shanghai upgrade and the approval of the first Ethereum futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which introduced “key growth periods” for staked Ether.

The Shanghai upgrade occurred in April 2023, enabling network participants to unstake their Ether for the first time since the network transition to PoS during the Merge.

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Staking activities also growing on Polygon

Ethereum’s validator growth is part of a broader increase in staking activities across other blockchains, including Polygon’s PoS network.

Polygon wallets involved in staking increased by more than 36.4% over the past year, although the number of Polygon-based validators remained steady since June, due in part to the blockchain’s validator cap.

This cross-chain validator growth suggests participants are not deterred by the potential for reduced staking returns, the report noted.

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