The Dencun hard fork on Ethereum Mainnet was successfully completed on March 13, 2024 at 13:55 UTC. The hard fork went extremely smooth, with no hiccups to the network. Blockdaemon continues to monitor post-fork and is in touch with relay providers to monitor any planned/unplanned effects in the MEV pipeline.

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For our staking customers, there aren’t many relevant changes in Dencun fork's scope. However, the activation queue capacity has been reduced to a fixed rate of 8 validators per epoch, or ​​1800 per day. Prior to the hard fork, this sat at 14 per epoch, and changes dynamically depending on the number of active validators on the network. With the recently renewed interest in Ethereum staking, it will be interesting to watch whether the validator queue will become congested again.

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Following this successful milestone, we want to take the opportunity to walk you through our ETH staking offering, which we continuously improve and refine to make it as easy and flexible for you as possible.

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It's important to test before transferring valuable funds.

We support the full validator lifecycle on Ethereum with our staking tooling, now on Holsky testnet (since Goerli is being deprecated):

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• Launch validators via staking integration API, the Blockdaemon app, or via our institutional wallet
• Track your rewards using our ETH staking dashboard, or our staking reporting API
• Exit your validators via our two new exit endpoints in the API, or via your dashboard in the Blockdaemon app

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We can also supply the required 32 $HolETH testnet tokens; simply contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM).

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Launch validators via API, app, or institutional wallet.

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For our large institutional customers, we generally recommend integrating with our Blockdaemon staking API. Besides staking $ETH, it also supports $SOL, $DOT, $MATIC, and over the last year we also added staking on Cosmos, Binance, NEAR, Cardano and Avalanche. The API speeds up the time-to-rewards significantly by cutting down operational efforts, and it will save you costs and operational hassle by batching up to 250 Ethereum validators into one transaction.

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However, there are instances where you may not want to integrate programmatically with your own systems, such as when testing Ethereum staking. You can then simply stake $ETH via the simple user interface in our Blockdaemon app. With our support of WalletConnect functionality, this self-serve option has become even more powerful. You can now use most leading wallets such as MetaMask or Ledger to fund your validators, and we are connected to all major custodians. Either these custodians are integrated with our API directly, or you can use WalletConnect, such as in this step-by-step video tutorial for Ledger Vault.

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Additional staking options include our MetaMask Institutional integration, and of course directly from inside of our institutional wallet. Soon, you’ll even be able to stake from your cold wallet!

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Monitor your rewards via API or the Ethereum dashboard

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For entities staking crypto assets, tracking and accounting their rewards is key. Recognizing this, we have included reporting capabilities in our staking APIs from the start. This API allows you to query all rewards from any validator. Whether you need daily/weekly/monthly data, you can query historically back until April 2022 and get a full breakdown of Ethereum protocol rewards, transaction fee rewards and MEV rewards.

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For those who prefer a graphical user interface, our Ethereum rewards dashboard is the perfect solution. The dashboard visually presents the rewards API data, allowing you to export any daily range within the last 60 days as a CSV file for in-depth analysis or importing into your accounting software.

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Additionally, our dashboard provides transparency into your validator’s status with our recent improvements: 

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• Launch validators via our Staking API or directly in your Blockdaemon App to see them auto-populate on the dashboard, with a reserved status shown even before on-chain registration, streamlining your validator onboarding process.
• Manage thousands of validators effortlessly with the new filter and search functionality. Filter by status or search by address for quick navigation through your validator list.

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Be confident knowing you can exit your validators whenever needed.

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Partial withdrawals, which transfer validator protocol rewards to the designated withdrawal address, occur automatically within the protocol. At around 1m active validators on the network, the reward sweep occurs about every ~9 days.
For more details, refer to our FAQ.

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For full withdrawals, i.e. completely exiting a validator to reclaim the 32 $ETH collateral per validator, we offer various options:

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• Via staking API: No matter how you originally staked with Blockdaemon, you can access our two exit API endpoints programmatically. This is best for self-serve flexibility triggered from the customer system, and allows for compliance concerns about business continuity.
• Via Blockdaemon app: We have added an exit option in your validator dashboard. The right to exit can be separately permissioned. This will be best for individual validators and to exit testnet nodes.‍
• Via Blockdaemon assistance: You can let your Customer Success Manager (CSM) know how many validators to exit. The Blockdaemon team will create and later execute the task to exit the specified number of validators (specific validators chosen by Blockdaemon). This is best suited to unstake larger quantities of validators via our full-service.

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Come stake your $ETH with us on Ethereum!

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The Ethereum ecosystem had a great run over 2023 and is already capturing a good part of the current bullish market sentiment. The protocol has surpassed 26% of all ETH staked, with close to 1 million active validators providing about 120 billion USD in security.

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And with the excitement about the launch of EigenLayer restaking and many Actively Validated Services (AVS) to build upon this year, this is opens up a whole new segment for ETH stakers.

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We’ll continue to work hard to provide you competitive rewards, keep your assets safe and your staking process easy.
Contact us today to explore the optimal way to begin your journey.