The Ethereum Foundation has staked an additional 22,517 ETH, valued at approximately $46.2 million, as part of an ongoing staking initiative, according to on-chain data compiled by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence. The latest activity was carried out across 11 separate transactions, with roughly 2,047 ETH — around $4.2 million — moved in each. Combined with earlier deposits, the Foundation has now staked a total of 24,623 ETH, worth close to $50 million.
The staking push stems from a revised treasury strategy the Foundation unveiled last June, in which it committed to making more active use of staking and decentralized finance protocols. The organization stated at the time that this approach would help “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, with participants receiving ETH rewards as yield in return.
The Foundation’s longer-term goal is to stake approximately 70,000 ETH, equivalent to around $142 million worth of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. All staking rewards generated are set to flow back to the Foundation itself. According to Arkham data, the Foundation currently holds around 147,000 ETH, with its total portfolio valued at more than $364 million. Roughly $78 billion worth of ETH is presently staked across the broader network.
The staking activity coincides with the Foundation’s involvement in funding the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a newly proposed framework intended to better align infrastructure providers and stakeholders within the Ethereum ecosystem. The initiative was put forward by Gnosis and Zisk and seeks to address existing barriers and limitations facing Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling networks. Under the EEZ model, layer-2 networks could operate within shared environments, reducing duplicated efforts and easing the isolation these networks can experience from Ethereum’s mainnet.
The EEZ proposal arrives shortly after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called for a “new path” in the layer-2 roadmap, urging scaling networks to function less as mere “extensions” of Ethereum mainnet. Buterin has not made any public statement directly addressing the EEZ, though he did reshare the initiative’s introductory announcement on X, which some observers interpret as a possible signal of support. A representative for the Ethereum Foundation had not responded to a request for comment at the time of reporting.
Originally reported by Decrypt.
