Ethereum's entry queue holds new stakers for 25 days as MetaMask exits drain

New Ethereum stakers are now waiting about 25 days before their $ETH begins generating any returns. As of October 5, 1.44 million $ETH was in the entry queue according to data from validatorqueue.com.

The exit queue dropped to 767,349 $ETH from a peak of 850,736 $ETH on October 2 as MetaMask unwinds the validators it ran through Lido. Exits take about 13 days and eight hours to clear.

17,000 Lido validators joined the queue in days

MetaMask Staking set about removing validators after a security incident disclosure on September 30. Some 17,000 validators with ~523,000 $ETH, all running for Lido, the biggest liquid staking protocol, got in line.

On September 29, the exit queue was close to 166,000 $ETH. Within days it passed 850,000 $ETH, and then it started to drain.

Ethereum limits the amount of stake flowing in or out of the validator set thanks to churn, now 256 $ETH per epoch in each direction. An epoch is about 6.4 minutes long, so only about 57,600 $ETH gets cleared per day on each side.

Total staked $ETH is ~43.7 million or ~36% of supply. The number of active validators is 866,944.

Staking yield is ~2.6%.

Lido puts re-entry for the withdrawn stake at 45 days

MetaMask’s withdrawn $ETH may also prolong the entry line.

Lido calls the exits temporary and anticipates getting back most of the stake. It puts re-entry at up to 45 days.

The last impacted validators should exit but not fully withdraw by the end of October 7, Cryptopolitan reported on October 1.

“Your Secret Recovery Phrase, your keys, and the assets in your wallet were not part of this incident because they CANNOT be,” Consensys founder Joseph Lubin wrote on X. MetaMask says its staking is non-custodial and has no withdrawal keys for customers.

As a precaution, Lubin said the company rotated its validator keys. Rotated validators must exit and rejoin the queue to stake again.

MetaMask has issued a warning to users to be aware of phishing and protect their secret recovery phrase.

$ETH traded near $2,715 at the time of writing, up 0.4% over 24 hours. At this price, the ~523,000 $ETH leaving MetaMask’s validators is worth about $1.42 billion.