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- Ethereum Unstaking Pressure Vanishes as Exit Queue Clears
Ethereum Unstaking Pressure Vanishes as Exit Queue Clears
Plus: 🟢 LIT jumps on buybacks, ⏸️ Starknet suffers fresh outage, 💰 Grayscale pays ETH staking rewards.
Juan Aranovich
January 06, 2026
Hi! In today’s edition:
🧱 Ethereum validator exit queue drops to multi-year lows
📈 LIT rallies 18% as Lighter begins token buybacks
⏸️ Starknet goes dark for four hours before resuming
💰 Grayscale distributes ETH staking rewards to ETF holders
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By Tikta
Ethereum Validator Exit Queue Reaches Multi-Year Lows
The queue for validators looking to exit the network has cleared significantly, with the amount of ETH in the exit queue sitting at 5,568 ETH and very short wait times, according to data from beaconcha.in.
It marks a major shift from heavy unstaking pressure just a few months ago. The amount of ETH in the exit queue hit a peak of 2.67 million ETH in September.
In contrast, the entry queue holds about 1,321,188 ETH looking to be staked, with a wait time of 22 days.
“For the first time since July the Ethereum validator exit queue has reached 0. For context, roughly 57,600 ETH was exiting per day for the last few months (over 5% of ETH supply in total, or about $20b),” said the Monad Foundation’s head of DeFi Abdul Rehman.
Unchained On Air: Double Header Today with DEX in the City & Laura Shin!
At 12pm ET, DEX in the City hosts Jessi Brooks, Vy Le and Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos discuss Polymarket insider trading, AI agents and Canton.
Then, Laura sits down with Ryan Graham and Alex Thorn to go over their 2026 predictions.
LIT Rallies 18% as Lighter Team Commences Buybacks
Decentralized exchange Lighter’s native token LIT surged 18% late on Monday as the team behind the protocol started an active buyback program using its fees.
“The fees generated and protocol buybacks can be tracked with the treasury account in the block explorer,” said the Lighter team, sharing a link to onchain records that show its treasury account holds 180,588 LIT tokens.
The LIT token was unveiled only last week, with the team committing to allocate 50% of the token’s 1 billion supply to the ecosystem.
Since launching its public mainnet in October, Lighter has quickly gained on Hyperliquid and Aster in share of the perpetual futures market. Data from DeFiLlama shows that Lighter recorded $161.19 billion in 30-day trading volume, outpacing Hyperliquid’s $152 billion and Aster’s $147 billion over the same period.
Starknet Back Online After Four-Hour Outage
Ethereum layer 2 network Starknet faced downtime on Monday, marking the second major network disruption since the Grinta upgrade rollout in September.
The Starknet team reported it was “back online and fully operational” at 10:30 am ET, after block production had stalled for four hours and eight minutes.
“Transactions submitted between 9:24 am and 9:42 am UTC may not have been processed properly. A retrospective, including full timeline, root causes, and long-term prevention measures will follow,” said the team.
During the Grinta incident, Remote Procedure Call (RPC) failures and sequencer bugs led to a nine-hour halt in block production that required a chain reorganization.
Grayscale Distributes ETH Staking Rewards to ETF Holders
The Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF (ETHE) has declared its first staking payout, distributing proceeds from ether staking rewards to shareholders.
Shareholders will receive $0.083178 per share on Jan. 6, based on holdings the day prior. The payment covers rewards earned from Oct. 6 to Dec. 31, 2025, and is the first distribution of its kind from a spot crypto ETF issuer.
“Distributing staking rewards to ETHE shareholders is a landmark moment, not just for Grayscale, but for the entire Ethereum community and ETPs at large,” said Grayscale CEO Peter Mintzberg.
Grayscale activated staking for ETHE and its Mini ETF (ETH) in October 2025, using institutional custodians and validators. The funds operate outside the Investment Company Act of 1940, enabling this feature unlike traditional ETFs.
🏠 Traders can now speculate on home prices through new Polymarket markets powered by Parcl’s daily city-level housing indices, letting users bet on short-term price moves in major U.S. metros using transparent, publicly verifiable real estate data.
🔐 Ledger confirmed that its e-commerce partner Global-e suffered unauthorized access to order data affecting some customers, while stressing that no wallets, recovery phrases, crypto balances, or payment details were exposed and that independent forensic investigators were hired.
🎯 U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres introduced legislation to bar elected officials and senior government staff from betting on prediction markets tied to political outcomes, following a controversial Polymarket wager on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that raised concerns about insider knowledge.
🕵️♂️ A hacker seized control of a multi-signature crypto wallet and stole $27.3 million, later pulling 1,000 ETH from Aave and washing a total of 6,300 ETH through Tornado Cash while still holding large leveraged bets tied to ETH and the DAI stablecoin.
🇨🇳 Beijing enlisted WeBank, Alipay’s MYBank, and eight major state banks to pay interest on digital yuan balances starting March 20, offering a modest 0.05% annualized return to boost adoption of China’s central bank digital currency while requiring stricter identity checks for eligible wallets.
🚀 Solana-based Jupiter rolled out its own stablecoin, JupUSD, a dollar-pegged token mostly backed by BlackRock-linked assets via Ethena, designed to unify payments, lending, trading, and settlements across Jupiter’s growing “superapp” ecosystem.
🏢 PwC is ramping up its crypto auditing and consulting work after years of caution, driven by clearer U.S. stablecoin rules under the GENIUS Act and a friendlier regulatory climate that is pushing the Big Four firm to more actively advise clients on tokenization and crypto-based payments.
🇯🇵 Japan’s finance minister signaled strong political backing for digital assets by calling exchanges key to public access, as the country moves to reclassify over 100 cryptocurrencies as financial products, cut crypto taxes, and position 2026 as a breakout year for blockchain-driven markets.
🧱 Bitmine boosted its ether holdings to more than 4.14 million ETH—over 3% of total supply—pushing its crypto and cash reserves above $14 billion as it expands staking operations ahead of launching its own validator network in early 2026.
🤝 Crypto data firm The Tie completed its first-ever acquisition by buying Estonia-based staking provider Stakin, adding a new infrastructure business line and bringing in a team that manages over $1 billion in delegated assets across more than 40 blockchains.
