What are withdrawals?

The Shanghai upgrade will give solo stakers the ability to withdraw and unlock their 32 ETH and earned rewards, and exit the network.

Unstaking your 32 ETH as a validator requires waiting in the ‘exit queue’ which is determined by Ethereum’s ‘churn limit*’. After a validator passes through the queue, it enters the ‘withdrawal period’ which varies as a function of the number of validators that want to withdraw at the same time. This will not be instant and will vary, it could take hours, weeks, or months.

*The churn limit is a variable that defines the maximum number of validators that can be exited per epoch (every 6.4 minutes).