A record 910,461 ETH was waiting to exit the Ethereum network as of Aug. 18, with wait times of about 15 days and 17 hours.

In dollar terms, the amount of ETH in the validator exit queue sits at around $3.9 billion and amounts to over 2.5% of ETH’s total supply.

The surge in exits comes as ETH retraced from a recent rally past $4,788 to just under $4,300 as of Tuesday morning. While validators in the exit queue are likely lining up to sell some amount of the ETH, onchain analysts suggest there could be other reasons at play.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

One of them could potentially be the depegging of Lido’s liquid staked ETH (stETH) – something that started in July when a trader withdrew a significant amount from Aave, resulting in rates on ETH loans to surge past more than borrowers could afford.

As leveraged traders were forced to unwind positions, they pushed the price of stETH down slightly below the value of ETH.

“The queue is negative for LSTs/LRTs because it increases the duration risk of holding these instruments, but for ETH/USD it is largely neutral as stETH,” said Rob Schmitt, cofounder of Cork Protocol.