<p>Roughly eight hours after Ethereum's Shapella upgrade went live just before 6:30 p.m. EDT last night, more than $1.34 billion in ether was waiting to be withdrawn. That figure has increased to over $1.71 billion as of 8:00 am EDT.</p> <p>695,750 ether was <a href="https://token.unlocks.app/ethereum-shanghai">pending</a> withdrawal earlier today, according to the token.unlocks application. That figure has increased to 860,750 coins.</p> <p>More than 99,000 ether ($190 million) was estimated to be withdrawn over the next 11 hours — creating an early post-Shapella average of $380 million in ether withdrawn per day.</p> <div id="attachment_226128"class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="max-width: 1960px;"><img class="has-caption wp-image-226128 size-full" src="https://www.tbstat.com/wp/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-2023-04-13-at-8.26.41.png" alt="token.unlocks chart showing ETH withdrawals" width="1950" height="1052" /><p class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">ETH is being withdrawn on an hourly basis. Source: token.unlocks.app</span></p></div> <p>As The Block previously reported, on-chain estimates <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/225906/ethereum-rewards-liquid-shapella">predicted</a> more than 1.1 million ether — worth $2 billion — in accrued validator rewards would be available to be claimed following Shapella.</p> <p>Glassnode <a href="https://insights.glassnode.com/the-week-onchain-week-15-2023/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> that validators might sell 170,000 ETH ($317 million) in the first seven days after Shapella — which it believes could have an "acceptable impact" on the price of ether.</p> <h2>How much ether is still staked?</h2> <p>Currently, 17.52 million ether is staked — excluding rewards — which accounts for 15.6% of the total ether supply.</p> <p>Since the Shanghai upgrade went live, the net staking balance has decreased by 63,150 ether ($120 million) — roughly 67,710 ETH has been withdrawn while approximately 4,560 ETH has been deposited.</p> <h2>How vital is Shapella for Ethereum?</h2> <p>Last night's Shapella hard fork <a href="https://www.theblock.co/linked/86179/eth2-beacon-launch-staking">implemented</a> Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4895. Users and validators can now withdraw their staked ether on the network.</p> <p>The upgrade was released on the mainnet at block height 6209536.</p> <p>Shapella is a milestone event for Ethereum, following the implementation of EIP-1559 and The Merge. Now that withdrawals have been enabled, the network fully transitioned to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.</p> <p>Following the upgrade, the price of ether hovered above $1,900. It has since <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/226155/ethereum-shapella-price-2000">increased</a> to nearly $2,000 per coin.</p> <p><em>Updated headline and text with updated figures.</em></p> <div id="attachment_226141"class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="max-width: 2678px;"><img class="has-caption wp-image-226141 size-full" src="https://www.tbstat.com/wp/uploads/2023/04/ETHUSD_2023-04-13_09-05-13.png" alt="TradingView chart showing the price of ETH" width="2668" height="764" /><p class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">The price of ether remained largely unaffected since Shapella went live last night. Source: TradingView</span></p></div><br /><span class="copyright"><p>© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.</p> </span>