In a criticized post on
The on-chain analytics firm said on Tuesday that 50.18% of all ETH historically issued now resides in the pledged deposit contract. This number reflects the cumulative ETH that has flowed into the contract since staking was introduced in 2022, before the network transitioned from Proof-of-Work to PoS.
According to CoinDesk data, the total supply of Ethereum is 120.69 million tokens. Bitmine is the world’s largest financial company focusing on Ethereum, with 4.29 million ETH, of which 2.9 million are pledged. According to Arkham data, the largest holder is the Eth2 Beacon deposit contract, with 77.1 million, accounting for more than 60% of the total supply. It has the most resources as it is the central mandatory gateway for staking to secure the blockchain. Beacon is followed by Binance (4.1 million ETH), BlackRock (3.4 million), and Coinbase (2.9 million).
When tokens are staked, they cannot be transferred or traded. Withdrawals have been enabled since the 2023 Shanghai upgrade, allowing validators to exit and return ETH to circulation.
The distinction prompted some analysts to caution against interpreting the 50% figure as a permanent supply lock-in.
“Inaccurate and materially misleading”
“The article is inaccurate, or at least materially misleading,” CoinShares senior researcher Luke Nolan told CoinDesk. “It references a one-way deposit contract for ETH staking, but does not account for withdrawals. While ETH is sent to this contract when a validator stakes, it is not a permanent receiver.”
Nolan said that since withdrawals are enabled, ETH can exit the validator set and re-enter circulation, meaning that simply looking at deposit contract balances may inflate the amount of effective collateral.
“There are also important nuances to the numbers quoted,” he added. “It is incorrect to say that more than 80 million ETH is currently staked. Historically approximately 80 million ETH has gone through the staking contract, but today the amount actively pledged is closer to 37 million ETH, which is approximately 30% of the current circulating supply. This distinction changes that narrative significantly.”
BizDev Aleksandr Vat of Ethplorer.io agreed with Nolan and provided supporting data to CoinDesk reinforcing the distinction.
The Beacon deposit contract balance on the Etherscan tracker is currently approximately 80.97 million ETH, reflecting the cumulative amount of deposits since launch and will not decrease when validators exit. Vat stated that withdrawals are handled by minting ETH back to execution layer addresses, rather than being deducted from the deposit contract itself.
According to the active staking metric, based on data from Ethplorer and CryptoQuant, approximately 37,253,430 ETH are currently staked, meaning that 30.8% of the total supply is pledged.
Vat said Santiment’s 50% figure appears to be comparing the cumulative Beacon contract balance to the historically issued supply before the EIP-1559 burn. He noted that while this may be mathematically consistent depending on the denominator used, it does not represent the amount of ETH currently locked or removed from circulation.
Ethereum matures into a “digital bond”
Even so, Sigma Capital partner and CEO Vineet Budki told CoinDesk that this milestone highlights how central staking has become part of Ethereum’s economic design. As participation increases, more and more ETH earns income through validator rewards, reinforcing its position as a yield-generating cryptoasset, he said, adding that he sees this development as evidence of Ethereum maturing into what he calls a “digital bond.”
“Ethereum’s 50% collateralized supply milestone marks its evolution into a digital bond, where the network’s security is driven by long-term belief rather than short-term speculation,” Budki said. “By locking half of the total amount issued in a one-way vault, the protocol triggers a structural supply crunch.”
Budki also noted an acceleration in network activity, including a 125% year-over-year increase in daily transaction volume, a doubling of daily active addresses, and an increase in tokenized real-world assets, much of which is occurring on the Layer 2 network as it returns to Ethereum’s base layer.
However, Nolan noted that the recent growth in validators has been concentrated among large players.
“A large portion of recent validator entries have been driven by large entities such as Bitmine and US-listed ETFs, which account for a sizeable share of the entry queue,” he noted.
Budki concluded that as staking levels continue to climb, the debate shows how Ethereum’s supply metrics and how they are presented can significantly impact the market narrative.
