TLDR
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin defended the 45-day staking exit queue after criticism
- Galaxy Digital’s head of DeFi called the queue length “troubling” compared to Solana’s 2-day unstaking
- Buterin likened staking to a “solemn duty” where “friction in quitting is part of the deal”
- The tweets criticizing Ethereum were deleted following community backlash
- Despite the exit queue concerns, Ethereum maintains over 1 million validators with 35.6 million ETH staked
The cryptocurrency community has been buzzing with debate after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin addressed growing concerns about the blockchain’s lengthy staking exit queue. The queue, which has stretched to 45 days, became a point of contention when Galaxy Digital’s head of DeFi, Michael Marcantonio, publicly criticized it on social media.
Marcantonio’s now-deleted posts compared Ethereum unfavorably to Solana, which requires only two days to unstake assets. “Unclear how a network that takes 45 days to return assets can serve as a suitable candidate to power the next era of global capital markets,” he wrote before removing the comments.
A short story of before and after pic.twitter.com/t4VoFGlQ2e
— Etc. (@ec265) September 17, 2025
Buterin’s response took a philosophical approach to the issue. He compared staking on Ethereum to “a soldier deciding to quit the army,” suggesting that the process involves “taking on a solemn duty to defend the chain.” In his view, “friction in quitting is part of the deal” because “an army cannot hold together if any percent of it can suddenly leave at any time.”
The Ethereum network remains robust despite these concerns. It currently has more than one million active validators and 35.6 million ETH staked, representing almost 30% of the entire supply.
Community Reaction to the Controversy
The criticism from Galaxy Digital sparked strong reactions within the Ethereum community. Former Consensys product manager Jimmy Ragosa claimed that the “relentless ETH FUD” had led many entities with interests in Ethereum to reconsider their business relationships with Galaxy Digital.
Crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro commented on the deletion of the tweets, saying Marcantonio “was engaging in insanely gaslighty psyops.” Shapiro added that he wished the posts had remained visible because they “only made Ethereum look great both technologically and culturally.”
Anthony Sassano, an Ethereum educator, took a stronger stance, stating he would recommend people stop doing business with Galaxy Digital. He argued that deleting tweets doesn’t change the fact that their head of DeFi “doesn’t understand the very basics of this industry.”
Current State of Ethereum Staking
While Buterin acknowledged that the current staking queue design isn’t optimal, he cautioned that reducing the constants would make the chain “much less trustworthy” for nodes that don’t go online frequently.
The Ethereum exit queue has decreased slightly in recent days but remains high at 2.5 million ETH. A large portion of this is attributed to Kiln Finance following an exploit.
On the other side of the equation, there are currently 512,000 ETH in the entry queue, which recently hit a two-year high amid institutional accumulation.
Galaxy Digital has strong ties to Solana, having purchased $1.5 billion worth of SOL recently in partnership with Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto. The company was also the first Nasdaq-listed firm to tokenize its shares on the Solana blockchain.
The controversy highlights the ongoing competition between different blockchain ecosystems and the technical tradeoffs each platform makes regarding security, speed, and user experience.
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