Nearly 40M ETH staked as Ethereum adds 96,000 validators

From Jan. 1 to June 15, 2026, the Ethereum network added 96,462 validators and 4,049,669 ETH to its staking pool over roughly 165 days, raising total staked supply to 39,673,448 ETH across 1,239,795 validators.

On Jan. 1 the network carried 35,623,779 ETH staked across 1,143,333 validators; by June 15 those figures were 39,673,448 ETH and 1,239,795 validators, a net increase of 4,049,669 ETH and 96,462 validators.

The deposit contract introduced with The Merge in September 2022 requires exactly 32 ETH to activate a single validator. That 32 ETH acts as collateral: validators receive newly issued ETH and a share of transaction priority fees for correct operation, while penalties and slashing reduce stakes for downtime or misconduct.

Reported base staking yields average about 2.7% annually. Actual returns vary with the total amount staked, a validator’s uptime and exposure to miner extractable value opportunities. Validators run execution clients, consensus clients and a validator client that handles signing duties.

For users who do not run validators or who want liquid exposure, liquid staking protocols accept ETH, stake it on behalf of depositors and issue liquid staking tokens that represent a claim on the underlying staked ETH plus rewards. Those tokens can be traded or used as collateral in lending markets.

Across 33 tracked liquid staking providers, 14.41 million ETH was locked in liquid staking products, with a combined total value locked of about $25.664 billion as of June 15.

Lido Finance managed 8.89 million ETH, a 61.66% share of the liquid staking market, equivalent to roughly $15.43 billion in TVL. Binance Staked ETH held 3.66 million ETH, or 25.37% of the market. Other providers included Rocket Pool with 529,406 ETH, StakeWise V2 with 363,630 ETH, Liquid Collective with 343,811 ETH, mETH Protocol with 211,443 ETH, Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH with 155,663 ETH and Stader with 114,224 ETH.

Lido’s stETH uses a rebasing model that increases wallet balances as rewards accrue. Rocket Pool’s rETH and StakeWise’s osETH change token value relative to ETH over time or operate via vault-based models.

Over the seven days ending mid-June, Ethereum issued 94,525 ETH in validator rewards and burned 324 ETH through the EIP-1559 base-fee mechanism, producing a net addition of about 94,200 ETH for that week. Annualizing that week yields an estimated supply growth near 0.83%. Simulated figures under the pre-Merge proof-of-work model project an annualized supply growth near 4.035%.

Data through mid-June document the pace of staking adoption and the concentration of liquid staking services within a small number of large providers.