Chainfeeds Summary:
More than 60% of the total ETH supply is stored in the ETH2 deposit contract for validator staking.
Article source:
https://info.arkm.com/research/who-owns-the-most-ethereum-top-eth-holders-2026
Article Author:
Arkham
Opinion:
Arkham: The ETH2 Beacon deposit contract currently holds the most Ethereum (ETH), with total deposits exceeding 76.3 million ETH (approximately $240 billion). This ETH represents the total amount deposited for staking network security. According to data from the Arkham Intel platform, the next largest holders include the exchange Binance, holding 4.1 million ETH (approximately $13 billion) on behalf of its clients; ETF issuer BlackRock, holding 3.4 million ETH (approximately $11 billion); and Ethereum finance company Bitmine, holding 2.9 million ETH (approximately $9 billion). It's worth noting that Bitmine actually owns over 4.1 million ETH (approximately $14 billion), and Arkham's data only includes the portion verified on-chain. Among individual holders, Ethereum presale investor Rain Lohmus holds the most ETH, totaling 250,000 ETH (approximately $786 million), but he does not have access to this wallet. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin follows closely behind, holding 240,000 ETH (approximately $754 million), and his wallet remains accessible. Exchanges are among the largest institutional holders of Ethereum, with many of the top 20 ETH holders being centralized exchanges. As ETH is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, almost all exchanges offering cryptocurrency trading services offer ETH trading. These exchanges need to hold significant amounts of ETH for market making, ensuring smooth trading for users, maintaining sufficient liquidity for deposits and withdrawals, and providing staking services that allow ETH holders to earn additional returns on their assets. Among exchanges, Binance holds the largest amount of ETH, exceeding 4 million, worth approximately $13 billion. Binance has its own ETH staking service, which counts ETH held there towards its total holdings, and also includes cold wallet reserves. Coinbase is the second-largest ETH holder among exchanges, holding 2.9 million ETH, worth approximately $9 billion. This figure represents the total ETH held by all relevant addresses on Coinbase, including cold wallet reserves and staking services on cbETH. Upbit holds the third-largest amount of ETH among exchanges, with 1.5 million ETH, worth approximately $4.8 billion. Upbit is a South Korean centralized exchange that also offers its own ETH staking service. Public goods addresses are addresses used to support key components of the Ethereum network, most importantly smart contracts used for staking deposits. The reasons for holding ETH in different public goods addresses vary, but a key characteristic is that these addresses pool assets belonging to others and are not actually controlled by a single entity. We also include Arbitrum and Base in this category because most of the ETH held by these entities is bridging to their respective L2 caches. The ETH2 Beacon deposit contract, used to store and process staking deposits, holds the largest amount of ETH among all addresses—over 76 million ETH, equivalent to approximately $240 billion, representing 63% of the total supply. The Wrapped Ether (WETH) contract holds over 2.6 million ETH, worth over $9 billion. This address is used to mint WETH—a token pegged to the value of ETH but with scalability and usability across different blockchains. Unlike native ETH, which is not fully ERC-20 compliant, WETH can be used across different applications and blockchains. The total amount of ETH held at this address corresponds to the amount of WETH already minted.
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