$ETH Now, if you want to directly become an Ethereum validator, you have to wait in line for more than a month first.

As of July 22, the Ethereum staking entry queue still has about 2.5 million ETH, with an estimated waiting time of over 43 days. In contrast, the exit queue waiting time is about a few minutes, which is practically negligible.

Judging purely by the numbers, there’s no doubt that more and more staked ETH is siphoning into circulating supply in the market.

But more worth focusing on than the growth in staking size is the fact that queueing is starting to become a capital efficiency issue. After all, for ETH treasury companies and institutions that choose the native staking route, a more-than-40-day queue wait means that a sizable amount of assets cannot temporarily generate staking rewards—so asset allocation, liquidity arrangements, and opportunity costs all need to be recalculated.

In the end, once ETH is incorporated more deeply into the balance sheet, the problem Staking faces is no longer just “how to get more people to participate,” but instead becomes a more traditional and more complex asset management issue.