Ethereum Staking Queues Clear, Turning ETH Into A More Liquid Macro Trade

Ethereum’s once congested staking queues have effectively emptied, meaning new validators can now join or exit the network almost in real time instead of waiting days or weeks. That shift marks the end of the “always full” era that followed the Merge and Shanghai upgrades, when long lines to lock up ETH helped feed a narrative of structural supply shock. With queues near zero, staking demand looks episodic rather than relentless, and the market is starting to treat staking as just another yield instrument instead of a one way sink for coins.  

The new steady state comes with lower rewards. As more ETH has piled into staking, the annualized yield has compressed to roughly 3%, down from far juicier levels seen in earlier phases of proof of stake. At that rate, rewards still beat holding idle ETH on an exchange, but they are less likely to pull huge new flows on their own, especially when U.S. Treasury bills and other cash instruments offer similar returns. For traders, the key takeaway is that staking no longer removes a large chunk of supply at any given time, which removes one of the most powerful bullish talking points of the last two years.  

Ethereum remains the dominant DeFi base layer, but its grip is not absolute. The network still anchors around 58% of all DeFi total value locked, yet its own TVL sits near 74 billion dollars, well off the peaks above 100 billion as competing ecosystems such as Solana and Base pick up more of the incremental growth. That fragmentation matters for ETH because it limits how much of the broader crypto expansion is captured in fees and activity on the main chain and its rollups, even as staking becomes more flexible and liquid.  

Those cross currents are showing up in forward looking bets. Prediction markets tracked by Phemex and others now give ether only around an 11% chance of hitting a new all time high by March 2026, reflecting skepticism that lower staking yields and unconstrained validator flows can drive another explosive “supply crunch” rally on their own. Instead, analysts see ETH increasingly trading as a macro asset tied to broader risk sentiment, real world yield comparisons and the overall success of Ethereum based applications, rather than as a simple play on locked up supply. The clearing of the queues, in other words, has turned staking from a scarcity story into a more conventional part of Ethereum’s yield and liquidity mix.