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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his views on the growing problem of queuing for staking withdrawals. The network’s staking exit queue has been extended to more than six weeks.
On September 18, he posted on X platform,This mechanism is thoughtful design choice rather than flaws and compares it to militarized discipline.
Buterin emphasized that pledge is not arbitrary behavior but a commitment to protecting the network. From this perspective, friction mechanisms such as exit delay actually play the role of a security guardrail.
“If anyone in the army can leave suddenly at any time, this army cannot maintain cohesion,” he wrote, noting that Ethereum’s reliability depends on ensuring that validators cannot give up their duties instantly.
Buterin also admits that the current design is not perfect.He explained:“This does not mean that the current pledge queue design is the optimal solution, but that if the threshold is blindly lowered, it will greatly reduce the credibility of the chain for any node that is not frequently online..”
Buterin’s view coincides with Sreeram Kannan, founder of the replenishment agreement EigenLayer.
In his September 17 post, Kannan called Ethereum’s long exit period a “conservative parameter” and regarded it as a crucial security measure.
He explained that waiting time can effectively prevent worst-case scenarios, such as validator collaborative attacks, where participants may try to withdraw collectively before facing confiscation.
In view of this, Kannan warned: “Releasing the pledge must never be completed instantly.”
He further explained that shortening the process to several days could cause Ethereum to be attacked with exhausted security assumptions.on the contrary,Long window period allows detection and punishment of malicious behaviors such as double signatures to ensure that vicious validators cannot easily evade responsibility.
Kannan specifically notes that this buffering mechanism allows inactive nodes to reconnect and periodically verify correct forks.
He emphasized that without this mechanism, the competition fork may claim to be legal, resulting in offline nodes being unable to determine the authenticity when re-connecting.
He concluded: “Ethereum does not adopt a fixed long-term unstake mechanism, but is designed to be instantaneously processed when a small amount of pledge exits in a specific period. However, if a large amount of pledge applies for exit at the same time, the queue will accumulate, which may last for several months in the worst case.”
This strong defense comes as Ethereum exit queue hits an all-time high.The Ethereum Verifier Queue Data is displayed,The current backlog of detention has reached 43 days, involving 2.48 million ETH (approximately US$11.3 billion) waiting to be withdrawn.
