Just now, I noticed a rather interesting move from BlackRock—they have cut the staking fees on their Ethereum ETF fund. According to Bloomberg, this giant asset manager has reduced the fee from 18% to 10%. The rationale is quite clear: demand for staking ETH is surging, and other companies are jumping in as well.

In fact, demand for the 3% staking rewards has reached a record high. The amount of ETH locked for staking has just surpassed the 37 million mark—meaning more than 30% of the total circulating ETH supply is being staked. What else could prove stronger demand than this? Even the queue to become a validator is larger than the queue to withdraw—currently, more than 3 million ETH are waiting to enter the system.

But not everything is optimistic. Culper Research is warning that recent upgrades are actually reducing rewards for validators. They believe that lower yields will weaken demand from institutions and, ultimately, could push the price of ETH down. The firm has even placed a short position on ETH based on this analysis.

However, Vitalik Buterin has a different view. The co-founder of Ethereum believes that upcoming upgrades will lower the operating costs for validators, especially independent validators. So whether staking demand is truly at risk remains a major question.

Right now, ETH is trading around the $2.32K level. The Bollinger Bands suggest there could be a breakout, but the direction will depend on the macro backdrop and geopolitical conditions. Let’s wait and see how staking demand responds over the coming weeks.