Ethereum's staking ratio reached a record 34.4 percent of circulating supply, according to on-chain data, marking the network's highest staked share since the Merge in September 2022.
The ratio has climbed steadily through 2026, rising from 30.0 percent on Jan. 1 and surpassing prior highs of 32.4 percent and 33 percent reported earlier this year. The move extends a multi-year trend that began near zero in early 2021.
Approximately 34 million ETH are now active on the consensus layer. At $1,870 per ETH, total value locked in staking exceeds $63.5 billion—capital that backs validator collateral and secures block production across the network.
Liquid staking protocols are a primary driver. By issuing LSTs against deposited ETH, platforms like Lido and Rocket Pool let holders earn staking yield while keeping capital deployable across lending markets, AMMs and other DeFi venues. That composability has drawn in ETH that would otherwise sit idle, lowering the effective barrier to validator participation.
Entry queues for new validator deposits remain active, indicating demand has not softened despite more than a third of circulating supply already committed.
Exchange reserves have fallen alongside the staking increase, dropping to 14.9 million ETH—a move that reduces immediately available sell-side supply and reflects a preference for long-term positioning over short-term trading.
A higher staked base raises the economic cost of a successful attack: an adversary would need to acquire and risk slashing a larger share of ETH to compromise finality. The growing validator set also distributes validation power more broadly across the network.
Staking rewards flow from two sources: protocol issuance tied to the size of the validator set and priority fees from block production. EIP-1559's base-fee burn interacts with those dynamics by permanently removing a portion of transaction fees from supply, adding deflationary pressure when network activity is elevated.
