Ethereum's validator exit queue has dropped to zero for the first time in months, reversing from a peak of roughly 2.6 million ETH last year. But the relief is short-lived: more than 2.5 million ETH is now waiting to enter staking, pushing the activation delay to nearly 44 days. The shift underscores a growing appetite to lock up ETH, even as the token struggles to reclaim the $2,000 mark.
Exit queue empties, entry queue swells
The exit queue hitting zero means no validators are currently trying to leave the network. That's a sharp turnaround from 2025, when a backlog of withdrawals built up after the Shanghai upgrade. Now the bottleneck has moved to the other side. New validators face a 44-day wait to start earning rewards, a sign that demand to stake is outpacing the protocol's capacity to onboard them.
Total staked ETH has climbed to about 40.9 million coins, representing roughly 33.6% of the circulating supply. Nearly 887,000 active validators now secure the network. The numbers keep rising, and the queue shows no sign of shrinking.
Price action: ETH stuck in a range
Ethereum is trading around $1,950, trying to push above $2,000. It's been consolidating between roughly $1,880 and $1,970, with a broader range of $1,900 to $2,200. A sustained move above $2,200 would strengthen bullish momentum, with $2,400 as a major breakout level. On the downside, a daily close below $1,900 would shift attention to the $1,850 to $1,800 support area. Losing $1,800 would weaken the short-term outlook.
The timing isn't great for stakers who locked up ETH at higher prices. But the queue suggests many are willing to wait.
Meme token Maxi Doge raises $4.8M in presale
Separately, a new meme token called Maxi Doge ($MAXI) is in presale on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token. The presale price is set at $0.0002831, and the project has raised $4.8 million so far. It's a reminder that even as staking dominates the Ethereum narrative, speculative capital still flows into meme coins on the same network.
