Ethereum Foundation withdraws 17,000 ETH following approach to 70,000 staking milestone
Shortly after coming close to its staking goal of 70,000 ETH, the Ethereum Foundation has withdrawn more than 17,000 ETH valued at approximately $40 million.
Shortly after approaching its publicly stated objective of having 70,000 ETH in staking, the Ethereum Foundation has taken steps to withdraw a portion of its staked holdings.
According to data from Arkham, the Ethereum Foundation withdrew 17,035.326 ETH on Saturday, representing approximately $40 million in value. The transaction involved the deposit of wrapped staked ETH (wstETH) into Lido's unstETH smart contract, with the actual ETH tokens scheduled to be returned following completion of the withdrawal queue process.
Within the Ethereum ecosystem, the unstaking process refers to retrieving ETH that had been previously committed to securing the blockchain network via validators. Staked ETH gets deposited into the Ethereum Beacon Chain, where it stays locked while generating staking rewards. The unstaking procedure begins with submitting a withdrawal request, after which the assets enter a waiting queue before eventually being released to the user.
As of now, the Ethereum Foundation has not publicly disclosed the reasoning behind its decision to unstake 17,000 ETH, leading certain community members to speculate that the organization might be gearing up for a sale. "The biggest seller of ETH continues to be the people who created ETH," one user wrote.
Ethereum Foundation nears 70K staked ETH goal
Following a policy update in June 2025, the EF began its journey into ETH staking. During that period, the foundation announced that engaging in staking activities and decentralized finance participation would serve as a mechanism to support funding for protocol research, development initiatives and grants for the broader ecosystem.
Beginning in February, the foundation has consistently grown its staking position, with an initial stake of 2,016 ETH, followed by an additional 22,517 ETH deposit in March. In the earlier part of this month, the foundation committed more than 45,000 ETH through multiple transactions, pushing the total staked amount to approximately 69,500 ETH, falling just short of its internally established 70,000 ETH staking objective.
Despite these developments, governance-related risks continue to be a point of concern. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has previously warned that substantial staking activities by the foundation could create complications regarding neutrality in situations involving contentious hard forks, scenarios where competing blockchain versions might emerge.
DeFi protocols unite to back rsETH
In related news previously covered by Cointelegraph, various decentralized finance protocols have come together in a collaborative effort to provide stability for rsETH following a major $293 million security exploit targeting the Kelp restaking platform, which caused significant market turbulence. During the security incident, malicious actors managed to steal more than 116,000 restaked ETH tokens, subsequently utilizing them as collateral to secure borrowed funds, resulting in approximately $195 million in bad debt accumulating on Aave while putting additional pressure on the wider DeFi lending ecosystem.
Supporting entities have committed more than 43,500 ETH (valued at approximately $101 million) as part of a coordinated "DeFi United" initiative spearheaded by Aave, featuring involvement from Lido DAO, Golem Foundation, along with substantial contributions coming from EtherFi Foundation and Mantle.