Ethereum Staking Sees Accelerating Growth Ahead of Merge

cryptonews.com:

Staking of Ethereum’s native ETH tokens is accelerating ahead of ‘the Merge,’ with more than 9% of the entire supply of ETH now locked in staking protocols. Meanwhile, exchanges are being depleted of their ETH supply, as more investors are taking their tokens into their own custody and staking them.

According to crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics, the total amount of ETH sent to staking protocols exceeded 10m for the first time on March 8. In total, the firm said that about 9% of all ETH is now locked in staking contracts.

Included in this figure are also third-party staking providers, which makes it possible to stake ETH without having ETH 32 (USD 102,000) that Ethereum otherwise requires.

Lido has remained the dominant player among these staking providers, with the growth of ETH staked using Lido accelerating in March, according to data from analytics firm Delphi Digital.

The firm said in its newsletter on Tuesday that Lido is still responsible for over 25% of ETH staked. It added that the protocol last week saw its largest daily deposit ever, when ETH 197,000 were deposited.

Ethereum-native staking requires a user to put up ETH 32 for at least 1 year in order to receive annual staking rewards, making alternatives like Lido more attractive for regular users.

The inflow of tokens into Lido’s staking protocol has also led to a sharp price increase for the protocol’s governance token LDO, which on Thursday at 13:18 UTC was up by a strong 111% for the past 30 days, trading at USD 3.58.

LDO price past 30 days:

The acceleration in staking is notable given that there still is no firm date (some expect it to happen in the second quarter this year) set for when the merge between the new proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain and the current