Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system is facing its largest test yet. As of mid-September, roughly 2.5 million ETH — valued at roughly $11.25 billion — is waiting to leave the validator set, according to validator queue dashboards.

The backlog pushed exit wait times to more than 46 days on Monday, the longest in Ethereum’s short staking history, dashboards show. The last peak, in August, put the exit queue at 18 days.

The initial spark came on Sept. 9, when Kiln, a large infrastructure provider, chose to exit all of its validators as a safety precaution. The move, triggered by recent security incidents including the NPM supply-chain attack and the SwissBorg breach, pushed around 1.6 million ETH into the queue at once. Though unrelated to Ethereum’s staking protocol itself, the hacks rattled c

See Full Page