While The Merge has been successfully completed, 17.6 million ETH with a current market value of $29.2 billion remains out of reach.
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Stakers will soon be able to withdraw their Ether from a deposit contract — more than two years after it was first launched.
Coinbase says an imminent upgrade will be a key milestone for validators who locked away their ETH during the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
And while The Merge has been successfully completed, 17.6 million ETH with a current market value of $29.2 billion remains out of reach.
Coinbase says the Shanghai and Capella upgrades — collectively known as Shapella — will enable validators to get their crypto back.
And better still, they should have the flexibility to stake additional Ether without facing onerous restrictions or uncertainty. Explaining what its customers should expect, the exchange said:
"There's no need to unstake — you can continue staking your ETH and earning up to 6.0% APY. No action is required and your assets will be safe and secure during the upgrade."
However, there's one potential pitfall for those who want to be reunited with their ETH: Coinbase is expecting a bit of a backlog once the upgrade has been fully finalized.
"Since the Ethereum protocol controls the unstaking process and we’re simply the conduit, we can't share an exact waiting period when you request to unstake. We anticipate that demand for unstaking will be high soon after the upgrade and it may take the protocol weeks to months to process unstaking requests."<div><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1470311764&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true"></iframe></div>
