Since early September, a drop exceeding a quarter has been recorded in the amount of Ether waiting to enter staking, while the longest exit queue of 2026 was reached.
A surge exceeding fivefold in Ether ETH awaiting exit from Ethereum staking was recorded over a span of three days after validators were pulled by MetaMask following a security incident at a widely used wallet application last week, thereby driving the withdrawal queue to its longest duration of 2026.
Data analyzed revealed that about 166,000 ETH was awaiting withdrawal on September 29, before climbing to roughly 851,000 ETH by October 2—representing about 2% of the total 43.6 million staked ETH, which is well above the approximate 476,000 ETH peak recorded during a surge in May.
An approximate volume of 786,000 ETH, valued at slightly above $2 billion, was still being awaited as of Monday morning in Asia, accompanied by an estimated withdrawal delay stretching nearly 14 days.
Ethereum Staking Rewards Come With Validator Limits
Rewards are earned by holders who commit ether to validators—the computers utilized for verifying Ethereum transactions—while limits on how fast validators can enter or exit the network are imposed by the protocol to prevent sudden shocks to its security.
Under current restrictions, daily flows cap out at roughly 57,600 ETH entering and an equal amount exiting, causing major shifts to pile up as lengthy backlogs. Once coins leave the validator set, they must navigate a separate withdrawal procedure before finally landing in their owners’ personal wallets.
Separately, interest in launching new stakes has cooled down, with roughly 1.5 million ETH valued at about $4 billion waiting to enter on Monday alongside an estimated 25-day delay, dropping from approximately 2 million ETH and a 35-day wait observed back in early September.
MetaMask drove the vast majority of the surge, as the firm—widely recognized for its digital asset wallet—also operates validator nodes for Lido, a protocol pooling user funds for staking. Precautionary withdrawals at the time encompassed approximately 17,000 validators holding about 523,000 ETH, according to estimates from Ethereum security researcher Kaden, though those specific figures have not been verified by MetaMask.
On September 30, MetaMask revealed a security breach, prompting the firm to pull compromised validators offline, while an update on October 1 noted that its internal review uncovered no evidence pointing to compromised user wallets or client funds.
That makes the bulk of the withdrawal backlog a short-term detour for a single operator’s capital. Lido projects that the ether will trickle back into the system as those compromised validators cycle out, their balances clear the withdrawal queue, and the coins re-enter staking. Management calculated that the entire cycle could span up to roughly 45 days, during which the impacted validators will forfeit rewards while sitting offline.
“No action is required from stETH holders,” Lido said last week, referring to the token that represents users’ stake in the service.
Operations for the final impacted MetaMask validators are scheduled by Lido to halt staking by October 7, following which their coins will enter the backlog to resume staking.
