Ethereum (ETH) is expected to undergo a major upgrade in April under the codename Shanghai. This should make it possible, among other things, to stake ETH (stETH) to be able to send and sell easily again. That is also badly needed, because almost all strikers to stand at the moment of writing not in plus.
84% of the Ethereum strikers are under water
This is evident from on-chain data from Dune. At the time of writing, only 16,5% of ETH in the corresponding smart contract in green. So the rest of the ether is all locked into the contract for a price higher than 1,475 euros.
That is not surprising when you consider that the ETH price is all time high found at more than 4,100 euros. Staking services that make the principle a lot easier, such as Lido and Coinbase, have also not been working on this for very long.
At the moment, 14.6% of all ETH is tied up in the relevant contract. And in the case of Ethereum, fixed really means fixed, at least for now. For example, on Cardano (ADA), strikers can simply terminate the staking contract and get their ADA tokens back.
With Ethereum, this is only possible if a major upgrade takes place. The upcoming upgrade should make it possible to unblock ETH at all times, so that you can use it again for other smart contracts and to sell.
Shanghai upgrade bad news for ETH?
How the Shanghai upgrade will affect the Ethereum price remains to be seen. Once the upgrade is complete, the stETH that can’t be moved now suddenly has to be, allowing the people in the red to sell.
The previous major upgrade that Ethereum underwent was called The Merge. After this, a so-called sell-the-news event occurred, causing the price to drop 10% in a single day. Some analysts saw this blow coming. Of course, it can never be ruled out that this will not happen again.
