Ethereum’s validator exit queue has spiked reaching new highs, raising fair questions about timelines and rewards. This article explains how the exit and activation queues work, what to expect from the withdrawability delay and sweep, and how rewards work at each step. Ethereum is functioning as designed, rate-limiting exits and entries to protect the network, so stakers can plan operations with clear, realistic timelines.
What is Happening With the Exit Queue?
The Ethereum validator exit queue is at an all-time-high, currently over 46 days (as of September 12th):
Roughly 4.5% of staked ETH is being exited, or ~1.6M ETH, bringing the exit queue to 2.65M ETH.
What is Causing the Spike?
On September 9 2025, an infrastructure provider made the decision to exit all of their ETH validators as a security precaution and as a result around 1.6 million ETH (~$7bn) entered the exit queue to withdraw. This large exit of validators at the same time, caused the exit queue to reach its historical peak.
The provider’s decision followed two unrelated security incidents: the NPM Supply Chain Attack and the SwissBorg breach. Figment covered security related questions and our approach to security in this Figment Security Update. Figment’s staking services and infrastructure were not impacted by the recent security attacks and all client assets remain secure.
Other factors likely driving the growth of the entry queue include the SEC’s May statement confirming that protocol staking is not considered a security, which doubled ETH delegations at Figment; the anticipated approval of staked ETH ETFs, which could give institutions new, regulated ways to earn yield on Ethereum; and the growth of digital asset treasuries, which now hold over $100B in assets, with ETH representing about 15% as of August and steadily gaining share from BTC (Source). At the same time, there have been more exits, likely reflecting a mix of institutional rebalancing after ETH’s 160% rally since April and normal profit-taking.
What Stakers Need to Know:
First, Ethereum is operating exactly as intended – limiting how quickly validators can enter and exit the active validator set is an important security precaution. The size of the queue reflects the strong demand for staking and is widely understood to be a normal outcome of Ethereum’s design, demonstrating that the network is functioning exactly as intended.
It’s also important to remember that on Ethereum the actions that can be taken with validator keys are limited. For instance, a withdrawal address cannot be changed using validator keys. This is very important as stake (and consensus layer rewards) are sent to the withdrawal address. This is one of the strengths of non-custodial staking service providers like Figment; we never take control or custody of your tokens, they cannot be sent to another address even if validator keys become compromised.
As a reminder, Ethereum’s current churn limit is 256 ETH/epoch or about 57,600 ETH/day (assuming no missed blocks). This applies to both deposits and exits. The churm limit sets the maximum number of validators that can enter/exit in every epoch and scales with the total validator count.
Exiting the validator is the first step required in liquidating a staking position. Once the validator has exited, there is a 256 epoch delay (~27.3 hours) and the last step is the withdrawal sweep – sending the Ether (ETH) from the validator to the withdrawal address on the execution layer. The time required to be processed by the withdrawal sweep varies between 0 days and about 10 days. (See methodology below.)
In summary, a validator:
- Must wait for the exit queue, while in the exit queue the validator is still active, earning rewards; at most Ethereum can exit 57,600 ETH per day (currently the exit queue is about 45 days);
- Once exited, must wait for the 256 epoch (~27.3 hour) withdrawability delay – this is a constant value;
- Once through the withdrawability delay, wait for stake to be processed by the withdrawal sweep, which can take between 0 and 10 days (once again, see the note at the end of this piece).
What’s Next? The Activation Queue
2.65M ETH is waiting to exit, but what happens once it has exited? Some proportion of it – likely the majority – will activate new validators. If 75% of this ETH seeks to activate new validators, nearly 2M ETH will enter the activation queue. When ETFs gain approval for staking, they could potentially add another 4.7M ETH. Like the exit queue, Ethereum processes at most 256 ETH per epoch, or 57,600 ETH per day of deposits. The activation queue is currently 13 days, to this add the ~2M ETH from those currently exiting (35 days) and 4.7M from ETFs (81 days), and the total is 129 days. This assumes that there are no other ETH holders that choose to stake and enter the queue, like corporate treasuries.
As mentioned, validators earn rewards while in the exit queue, but they do not earn rewards during the withdrawability delay, waiting for the withdrawal sweep nor do they receive rewards while waiting in the activation queue. This means that some of the validators waiting to exit the active set and reactivate new validators, could miss out on between 11 and 140 days’ of rewards.
Ethereum’s validator queues are a built-in safeguard for network stability, not a flaw. While wait times may stretch from weeks to months, stakers continue earning rewards during the exit process and can plan activations accordingly. For institutions and ETH holders considering staking, acting now helps minimize missed rewards and ensures smoother participation.
Next Steps
Please reach out if you need help managing the exit and activation queues and the implications for your specific business ETH staking strategy. We will continue to provide updates to the community, as well as work directly with clients to optimize their rewards. Meet with us today.
