Olivia Capozzalo & Denis Omelchenko
January 21, 2026

gm Defiers!

Today’s big story:

Ethereum’s validator queue is back in focus after flipping from empty to congested in just a few weeks

In other news:

Bermuda goes on-chain
Pumpfun unveils investment arm
FEATURE: Crypto VCs debate the future of DePIN
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Inside Stripe’s crypto strategy with Privy CEO

The Defiant’s 2025 in review:

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

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The latest Stellar upgrade, X-Ray, delivers zero-knowledge cryptography that lets developers build privacy into their apps—protecting what matters while keeping Stellar radically open, trusted, and ready for real-world finance.

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$89,674	-1.21 %
Ethereum	$2,982.23	-2.56 %
BNB	$881.65	-2.80 %
XRP	$1.93	0.67 %
Solana	$128.84	-0.06 %

Today’s Big Story

Ethereum Staking Bottleneck Flips From Exit to Entry in Just Three Weeks

Ethereum’s validator queue is back in focus after flipping from empty to congested in just a few weeks.

Once the queue to unstake ETH finally cleared following months of backlog, the entry side quickly surged to a record high in recent weeks. ETH holders now need to wait nearly 49 days to join the network as a validator, topping the previous peak of roughly 44 days in June 2023, according to data from ValidatorQueue.

Ethereum validator queue. Source: ValidatorQueue

It’s still unclear how much of this churn is being driven by large, institutional staking players. As The Defiant reported back in September, Kiln — one of the biggest staking providers across networks — had been pulling out and reorganizing its ETH validators as part of its “additional precautionary measures to safeguard client assets” after it experienced a security breach.

Kiln said then that it had begun the “orderly exit of all of its Ethereum (ETH) validators.” At the time, Dune Analytics data showed Kiln controlled more than 1.6 million ETH across about 51,000 validators, ranking it as the fifth-largest staker before its exit. Today, Kiln has about 612,000 ETH staked across 19,000 validators, marking a more than 60% reduction in staked ETH since September.

However, it remains unclear whether or not Kiln has attempted to resume its previous Ethereum staking capacity, which could offer one explanation for the sudden spike in the network’s validator entry queue.

Tom Lee’s BitMine may also be adding to the congestion. The firm now holds more than 4.2 million ETH after it purchased an additional 35,268 ETH in the past week alone, further securing its #1 spot among ETH digital asset treasury firms.

Top-5 ETH DATs. Source: CoinGecko

In press release yesterday, Jan. 20, BitMine explicitly said it had increased its staked ETH by 581,920 ETH in the past week, bringing its total staked ETH to over 1.8 million. Lee claimed in the release that the firm “has staked more ETH than other entities in the world.”

The recent move seems likely to have added pressure on the already crowded validator entry queue, which began its spike upward at the end of December. At the time of writing, both Bitmine and Kiln had yet to respond to our request for comment on their staking moves.

Denis, staff reporter at The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

Liquid Staking Explained: From ETH to XRP with Firelight | Crypto 101 [SPONSORED]

In this episode, we explore liquid staking, how it works, why it was created, and how it’s expanding beyond traditional proof-of-stake blockchains. We start with staking fundamentals, explain why locked capital became a problem, and show how liquid staking tokens (LSTs) unlock new utility across DeFi.

How Stablecoins Are Rewiring Global Payments | Borderless CPO Alex Garn

In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Chris Storaker sits down with Alex Garn, chief product officer at Borderless, to unpack how stablecoins are quietly transforming cross-border payments — and what it actually takes to move money at scale across jurisdictions.

We explore why stablecoins are moving beyond trading and DeFi collateral into real-world enterprise payments, where they already outperform legacy rails on settlement speed, transparency, and custody — especially across emerging market corridors like Latin America and Southeast Asia.

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