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When can 'staked' Ethereum be sold?

Investors may not be able to sell Ethereum after the Shanghai upgrade as previously claimed.

By Mike Hesp
• 3 min read
When can 'staked' Ethereum be sold?

Contrary to earlier claims, investors may not be able to sell Ethereum after the Shanghai upgrade.

Just under 14 million ETH, which is currently worth about $19 billion, has been staked. ETH has, according to stakingrewards.com, become the largest Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain in the crypto world a few days after the merge.

However, investors cannot transfer their staked ETH at this time. This means that every staked Ether token reduces the total available supply of Ethereum. Staking therefore directly contributes to higher ETH prices if demand for Ether remains the same or increases.

So far the Ethereum website says that Ethereum will be made tradable with staking as part of the Shanghai upgrade. According to Ethereum developer Micah Zoltu, this information is incorrect. Zoltu says there is no exact activation date for Shanghai yet, and developers have not yet agreed on what will be included.

Investors remain in the dark about the transferability of their accrued ETH.

No official date yet for Ethereum staking

The transition of Ethereum to Proof of Stake was successful and proceeded without major technical issues. To ensure a smooth shift from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, certain features, such as the ability to withdraw ETH from the Staking Contract, have not yet been implemented.

All eyes are therefore on the next major upgrade, Shanghai, which was described by the Ethereum website as taking place six to twelve months after the merge. That timeline has since been canceled. There is currently no official date for Shanghai, and it is therefore unclear when and with which upgrade the transferability of staked Ether will be activated.

Nevertheless, Shanghai would introduce several other upgrades for the Ethereum blockchain aimed at lowering transaction costs. Among them, the interaction between blocks would be improved through a mechanism called thanksharding.

Thanksharding is a form of sharding that distributes processing of transaction data by involving stakers, which can improve the throughput of the Ethereum blockchain.

Thanksharding enables Ethereum Layer 2 networks built on rollup technology to bundle their transactions more efficiently. This can significantly reduce their transaction costs.

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