For more than two years after the launch of the Ethereum staking contract, staked ETH was locked on Ethereum 2.0. Stakers couldn't move their ETH anywhere, and could only use an explorer to check whether their validators were active, proposing blocks, and earning rewards as expected.
Now that staked ETH withdrawals are enabled, it's possible to start receiving validator rewards on an approximately weekly basis, as well as stake and unstake ETH at any time. The withdrawal process is not quite the same as regular Ethereum transactions, and depends on the Ethereum queue, which means it can be difficult to understand the current status of validators and withdrawals.
Here's a guide to using a blockchain explorer to figure out what's happening with your validator and when your withdrawals can be expected.
You may already be familiar with Ethereum blockchain explorers like Etherscan and ethVM, but today we are going to use BeaconChain – an explorer created specifically to provide information about Ethereum staking.
Go to BeaconChain and put in your withdrawal address.
- For this guide we assume that you have already updated your staking withdrawal address. For help with the address update and withdrawals in MEW, please write to support@myetherwallet.com.
- Even if the address you staked from was different from the address you set for withdrawals, you still use your withdrawal address for looking up the withdrawal information.
Select the Withdrawals tab on the bottom.
Here you will see any withdrawals that have already been deposited to this address. You may see:
- just the accumulated rewards withdrawal (likely to be around 4 or 5 ETH, depending on when you first staked)
- if your validator is still running, you should see (approximately) weekly deposits of validator rewards
- if you already exited your validator and the withdrawal is completed, you will see a full stake withdrawal of 32 ETH
Still waiting on rewards or stake that you haven't received? To see approximate timing of deposit for rewards that are still in queue, click on the blue validator number in the Validator column to be taken to your validator page.
Scroll down a bit to the Charts section, and then click on the Withdrawals tab icon that looks like a dollar bill. This will show you all withdrawals – those that have already been completed, and those that are still in queue.
- Note that if you set your withdrawal address and requested validator exit at the same time, your full validator balance, including rewards, will be deposited in one withdrawal. The following screenshot shows an example of a pending withdrawal of a validator (32 ETH) plus rewards in one sum.
- If you are staking through a provider like Staked.us, MEV and transaction fee rewards are going to be sent separately by the provider and will not be reflected in this Withdrawals view.
Finally, remember that time estimates on BeaconChain are not exact, and that MEW is not affiliated with BeaconChain, has no access to your stake, no control over deposit timing, and no ‘inside’ information about your validator or withdrawal status. The process described above is what is available to us, just the same as it is to you, in terms of validator information.
Happy staking (and unstaking)!
