The Ethereum Foundation has staked an additional 22,517 ETH, equivalent to $46.2 million, as part of its previously disclosed staking initiative, based on on-chain data. The most recent staking activity involved 11 separate transactions, with each transaction seeing 2,047 ETH staked, equating to approximately $4.2 million. The firm has staked a total of 24,623 ETH, which is valued at approximately $50 million, since it began actively incorporating staking into its updated treasury strategy introduced last June. The organization, under its newly established strategy, has committed to increasing the use of staking and DeFi protocols to “enhance financial sustainability and to support a key application category that is delivering on the promise of permissionless secure access to base civilizational infrastructure.”
Staking involves locking up tokens to assist in validating Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network, offering ETH token rewards in the form of yield to participants. Currently, the network has approximately $78 billion worth of ETH staked. The Ethereum Foundation plans to stake approximately 70,000 ETH, equivalent to $142 million, in the second largest cryptocurrency, with all rewards directed back to the Foundation. According to data from Arkham, the Foundation currently possesses approximately 147,000 ETH, with a total portfolio valuation exceeding $364 million.
The organization’s on-chain activity is taking place alongside its investment in the Ethereum Economic Zone, a novel framework aimed at enhancing the alignment of infrastructure and stakeholders within the Ethereum ecosystem. Proposed by Gnosis and Zisk, the “economic zone” seeks to tackle the barriers and limitations that currently affect Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling networks. For instance, within the EEZ framework, layer-2s are able to function in collaborative settings, minimizing redundant efforts while alleviating some of the separation that layer-2 networks might experience from the Ethereum mainnet.
The introduction of the EEZ follows closely on the heels of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin emphasizing the need for a “new path” in the layer-2 network roadmap, urging scaling networks to function less as “extensions” of the Ethereum mainnet. Buterin has yet to make a public statement regarding the Ethereum Economic Zone; however, he did share the introductory announcement from the EEZ on X, which could indicate his support. A spokesperson for the Ethereum Foundation has yet to reply to Decrypt’s inquiry for comment.