当 ETH 深入资产负债表：Staking 的下一阶段历史定位，何去何从？

Now, if you want to become an Ethereum validator directly, you'll have to wait in line for over a month.

As of July 22, there are still approximately 2.5 million ETH in the Ethereum staking entry queue, with an expected wait time of over 43 days. In contrast, the exit queue wait time is only a few minutes, almost negligible.

Looking at the numbers alone, there's no doubt that more and more ETH staking is absorbing circulating market supply.

But what's more noteworthy than the increase in staking scale is that the queue is starting to become a capital efficiency issue. After all, for ETH treasury companies and institutions choosing the native staking path, a wait of over 40 days means a significant amount of assets temporarily cannot generate staking rewards. Asset allocation, liquidity arrangements, and opportunity costs all need to be recalculated.

Ultimately, when ETH becomes more deeply embedded in balance sheets, the issues Staking faces are no longer just about "how to get more people involved" but begin to evolve into a more traditional and complex set of asset management problems.

1. Staking Rate Hits New High, How Should We Understand the Queue?

Ethereum's current high staking rate didn't form suddenly at a single point in time.

In 2023, the Shapella (Shanghai + Capella) upgrade enabled staking withdrawal functionality, allowing validators to retrieve staked principal and rewards at the protocol level. This formed a relatively complete entry, operation, and exit loop for ETH Staking. Subsequently, the market for LSD-based derivatives expanded rapidly, pushing the ETH staking rate ever higher.

As of writing, the total amount of ETH staked has surpassed 40 million, worth approximately $140 billion at current prices, accounting for over 33% of the total supply. This is a significant increase from the staking rate of about 10% a few years ago, hitting an all-time high.

In other words, currently, for every 3 ETH, more than 1 is being staked.

With the staking rate at a new high, the persistently long entry queue also reveals a new problem.

As is well known, Ethereum's entry and exit queues are essentially a rate-limiting mechanism designed to protect consensus stability. New ETH cannot enter the validator set without limit simultaneously, and exits cannot be concentrated in a short period. The protocol sets the amount of ETH that can be processed per Epoch based on the current validator set size. When the funds applying to enter or exit exceed the processing capacity, a queue forms.

From this perspective, a queue of 2.5 million ETH waiting to enter primarily indicates that the market's demand for staking capacity far exceeds the speed the protocol can currently accommodate. This could include both newly entering long-term capital and treasury companies deploying existing holdings, staking service providers adjusting their validator structures, and institutions transferring ETH from custodial accounts into the staking system.

Therefore, this sends a clear signal: at least in the current phase, there is far more capital willing to commit ETH to the staking system than capital actively withdrawing from the validator set.

This is a marked difference from the staking logic at the launch of the Beacon Chain.

Early ETH Staking was more of a network participation mechanism for technical users, solo validators, and long-term Ethereum supporters. Participants ran nodes, maintained the network, and bore technical risks in exchange for protocol rewards.

After the rise of liquid staking, it gradually became a product for average token holders to generate on-chain yields. For instance, exchange staking, staking-as-a-service, and staking pools gradually lowered the technical barrier. Liquid staking protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool further unlocked the usability of staked funds, allowing users to receive liquid staking tokens like stETH and rETH after staking their ETH. These tokens can not only be transferred and traded but also used in lending, liquidity pools, and other DeFi protocols.

Now, with a large amount of ETH flowing into corporate treasuries, fund products, and professional custody systems, Staking is undoubtedly moving into a third phase, transitioning from "who can participate in staking" to "how large-scale ETH should be managed."

Of course, the institutionalization mentioned here doesn't mean early staking was entirely dominated by retail, nor does it mean institutions will replace ordinary users. More accurately, it's a shift in the focus of market discussion:

Previously, the focus was on how ordinary users could earn staking yields. Now, it's beginning to focus on how staking can become a standardized treasury management capability when hundreds of thousands or even millions of ETH enter a company's balance sheet.

2. Structural Changes Behind Institutions like BitMine

The emergence of ETH treasury companies is making this change more tangible.

Because the core logic of a Bitcoin treasury company is to continuously accumulate BTC through financing and capital market operations, increasing the amount of Bitcoin per share. However, for ETH treasury companies, simply holding the asset is not the end goal of the strategy.

After all, BTC itself doesn't have a native staking yield. Holders looking for extra returns typically need to introduce lending, custody, derivatives, or other counterparty risks. ETH, on the other hand, can directly participate in Ethereum consensus and earn protocol rewards without selling the asset.

This naturally gives ETH treasuries an additional layer of operational space: besides deciding how much ETH to buy, they also need to decide how this ETH should be deployed.

BitMine's actions perfectly exemplify this institutional language.

According to its latest disclosed data, as of July 19, BitMine held a total of 5,777,468 ETH, accounting for approximately 4.8% of the total ETH supply. Of this, a total of 4,917,000 ETH was staked, representing 85% of its total ETH holdings, valued at approximately $9.2 billion.

Based on the ETH price at the time and BitMine's own 2.67% seven-day annualized staking yield, the company is estimated to generate approximately $247 million in annual staking revenue. If all its ETH were eventually fully staked, the estimated annualized rewards could reach around $290 million.

What's more noteworthy is the speed of this numerical change.

In early February this year, BitMine had approximately 2.8975 million ETH staked, accounting for about 67% of its holdings at the time. By mid-July, its staking scale had increased to approximately 4.9172 million ETH. This means that in less than six months, BitMine deployed over 2 million additional ETH into staking, and its staking coverage ratio increased from about two-thirds to 85%.

This shows that Tom Lee and BitMine are visibly staking the ETH they hold, transforming their ETH from just a crypto asset waiting for a price increase into a foundational on-chain asset with native yield-generating capabilities.

For an average investor, the staking rate might just be a yield option. But for BitMine, it is becoming a treasury operational metric on par with its ETH holdings, net asset value per share, and financing costs.

Concurrently, BitMine has also launched its own institutional-grade staking platform, MAVAN, to serve its own ETH treasury. It also plans to offer staking infrastructure to institutional investors, custodians, and ecosystem partners in the future (see also: Hong Kong Ethereum Observation: When the 'World Computer' Meets 'Interest-Bearing Assets', How Do Two Types of ETH Resonate?).

This means Staking serves at least three roles for BitMine: First, it adds a layer of ETH-denominated returns to long-term holdings. Second, staking rewards can be reinvested, increasing the amount of ETH in the treasury. Third, when self-built validator capabilities are opened externally, the staking infrastructure itself could become a service business.

SharpLink takes this logic a step further, from native staking to active yield management. For them, basic staking yields are just the starting point. Some staked ETH can also be allocated to on-chain yield funds, configured into DeFi strategies like liquidity provision and lending.

Lido V3's changes are happening at the infrastructure level. Previously, users and institutions primarily entered a unified liquid staking pool. Now, institutions can use more independent staking vaults, choosing their own node operators, fee structures, and risk parameters, while retaining the option to access stETH liquidity. This means liquid staking is evolving from a standardized product towards isolable, customizable institutional-grade infrastructure.

Therefore, the competition among ETH treasury companies in the future may not just be about who holds more, but also who can manage these ETH with lower costs, higher uptime, and better risk control.

From this perspective, ETH is also transforming from a crypto asset waiting for a price increase into an asset requiring ongoing management.

3. The Yield Isn't High, So Why is Staking Becoming More Important?

At the time of writing, the overall Ethereum staking APR is around 2.64%. To be realistic, compared to some DeFi products, this level is not exceptionally outstanding. Moreover, as the amount of ETH participating in staking continues to increase, this base yield may face further dilution.

But the institutional demand for Staking cannot simply be understood by the yield percentage. Staking reduces the opportunity cost of holding ETH long-term.

For a short-term trader, a 2-3% annualized return is hardly enough to offset ETH's own price volatility. However, for a treasury company, fund, or large address that has already decided to hold ETH long-term, the issue is that since ETH is already on the balance sheet, it must generate more ETH by participating in network security without giving up its ETH price exposure (see also: When Wall Street's ETH Starts 'Bearing Interest': From BlackRock's ETHB, Looking at the Shift in Ethereum's Asset Properties).

This is easy to understand. For a regular user holding 100 ETH, a 2.6% yield might not be significant. But for a treasury company holding millions of ETH, the same yield rate generates substantial absolute income, which can gradually influence the amount of ETH per share through long-term reinvestment.

This is also one of the key differences between ETH and BTC in the treasury narrative.

Therefore, when ETH enters an institution's balance sheet, the treasury department is not facing a static position but an on-chain asset that can be continuously deployed, accounted for, and adjusted.

And as institutional participation increases, native staking yield may also take on another function: becoming the benchmark yield for the entire ETH asset system.

This is easy to understand. For example, in the future, when a DeFi strategy promises a return of 5%, 8%, or even higher, an institution needs to compare not just "having a yield" vs. "having no yield," but how much extra return it generates relative to the ~2.6% native staking yield and what additional risks it incurs.

Lending, liquidity market making, structured products, and restaking strategies all need to prove their risk-return profile is justified relative to this base yield. From this perspective, the importance of Staking in the next phase lies not only in how much ETH it brings to holders but also in that it's becoming the underlying benchmark for measuring other on-chain strategies.

However, it still cannot be simply regarded as Ethereum's "risk-free rate." Stakers bear risks such as ETH price volatility, validator downtime, node failures, and potential slashing. Participation through service providers introduces operational and custodian risks. Further involvement in DeFi adds risks that compound with each additional protocol and strategy layer.

Furthermore, a higher staking rate isn't without negative impacts. If new capital flow is concentrated in the hands of a few treasury companies, custodians, liquid staking protocols, and node operators, it could exacerbate centralization among validators, cloud service providers, and within specific jurisdictions.

So, as staking evolves from a network participation mechanism to an institutional asset allocation tool, Ethereum needs to address not just how to accommodate more capital, but also how to maintain a balance between capital efficiency, institutional demands, and decentralization.

Final Thoughts

Overall, from the initial 32 ETH validator requirement at the Beacon Chain's launch, to liquid staking protocols lowering the participation barrier, and now to treasury companies, self-built validator networks, and institutional on-chain yield funds, the changes in Staking are essentially changes in the market's understanding of ETH.

It was initially a mechanism for participating in network consensus, then became a tool for ordinary users to earn on-chain yields, and is now entering corporate balance sheets, custody systems, and professional yield management frameworks.

For these long-term holders, a 2-3% yield may not be breathtaking.

But as long as ETH no longer just sits idly in an address or custodian account waiting for a price increase – as long as it can participate in network security, earn protocol rewards, be continuously reinvested, and maintain a degree of liquidity – it will accelerate its evolution into the underlying asset for other financial strategies.

This is the new defining challenge of the ETH era.