Ethereum Stake and Unstake 101

We take a look at expected times to participate in Ethereum staking.

Ethereum protocol times are measured in epochs, with 1 epoch being 384 seconds or around 6 and a half minutes. For ease of understanding, times based on these measurements have been translated roughly into minutes, hours and days.

Staking

• Every signed transaction visits the Ethereum mempool first, which can be referred to as the waiting room for transactions. Here the pending time is unknown, and will depend on network status, chosen gas fee and priority fee.
• Deposited - Once the transaction reaches the deposit contract (assuming it’s correct), the validator has a status of Deposited, meaning it has been accepted by the Execution Layer. At this point, the Consensus side is unaware of this deposit. Here there’s a waiting mechanism that is a legacy of our pre-Merge past, used to avoid the minuscule possibility of a chain reorg (might be removed in the future). The validator sits here for ~7 and a half hours.
• Pending - Once the deposit agreement has been finally accepted by the Consensus Layer, it moves to Pending state, meaning it has been added to the “staking queue”. Ethereum only allows a small number of validators to start or stop validating at a time ~(2025* a day), to maintain stability of the validator set. This takes from at least 25 minutes but can extend depending on the queue; right now it’s ~6 weeks. Timing can impacted with churn rate changes, so this exact time might be slightly lower.

Pending Validators

 88,885 / 25

 Source: https://beaconcha.in/

• Active - The validator is attesting to and proposing blocks. This is the state where you earn rewards!

Conclusion: Staking takes at least 8 hours, but it is very likely to take a lot longer as the demand to stake grows and more validators are added to the queue (the queue at the time of writing is 88,885 validators waiting). The waiting time right now is about a month and a half.

Unstaking

• Exiting - The validator is in the process of halting attesting to and proposing blocks. This means you have signed a valid voluntary exit or you’ve been slashed. Either way, you need to keep up your duties for now. When in exiting state, it means you’ve been added to the “withdrawal queue”. To move through this queue takes at least 25 minutesbut can extend depending on the queue; right now it’s 25.

Pending Validators

88,885 / 25

Source: https://beaconcha.in/

• Slashing - Slashing is a very small risk in Ethereum, but for informational purposes, let’s talk about this state. The validator is in the process of halting attesting to and proposing blocks, having been caught violating some consensus rule. You still have to perform duties, but you will get kicked out of the set. You also move through the queue but you’ll need 36 days to access the funds to account for extra penalties.
• Exited - The validator is no longer attesting or proposing, you are safe to disconnect the node clients. After exit there is one final delay of approximately 1 day before funds can be transferred to the withdrawal address.

Conclusion: Unstaking takes at least 25 minutes, but can vary depending on the withdrawal queue with a similar model as staking (the queue right now is 25 validators waiting and is expected to clear quite quickly). You also have a 1 day delay to access funds. So, all in all the waiting time right now is about 1 day.

* This number corresponds to the churn rate applied to the staking and withdrawal queues. For every 65,536 additional validators that are active on the Ethereum network, the number of new validators that can be activated per epoch increases by one, and the number of validator exits that can be processed per epoch also increases by one. Right now, the churn rate is 9.

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