According to blockchain data, a total of 318,180 wrapped Binance ETH (WBETH) derivative tokens – worth $502 million – were minted on Saturday and Sunday in five, roughly equal $100 million instalments

Binance’s liquid staking ether saw a sudden $500 million rush of inflows over the weekend, pushing its total locked value (TVL) to $1.2 billion, as per DefiLlama.

According to blockchain data, a total of 318,180 wrapped Binance ETH (WBETH) derivative tokens – worth $502 million – were minted on Saturday and Sunday in five, roughly equal $100 million instalments. The tokens then moved to a crypto address labelled as “Binance 8,” a cold wallet where the exchange holds users’ assets.

These latest transactions came after another $573 million in inflows earlier this month, triggering discussions among crypto observers about the apparently irregular nature of the movements. While competitor exchange Coinbase’s liquid staking derivative cbETH saw regular inflows and outflows on a daily basis over the past weeks, inflows to WBETH have been irregular and taken place in large chunks.

Binance explained in a social media post that the transactions were part of the exchange’s formerly announced action to slowly convert the original Binance-issued staked ether (BETH) tokens to WBETH.

In April, Binance introduced an upgraded version of BETH called WBETH, a liquid staking derivative that allows investors to use the tokens for borrowing and lending on DeFi protocols outside of Binance while earning staking rewards. When users lock up (stake) ether to participate in staking via Binance, they get a derivative token that represents the staked assets.

The exchange announced a month back several measures to improve the new token and check activity with the old one, including “progressively” burning BETH tokens held in Binance wallets.

As per blockchain data, Binance burned 330,000 BETH on Monday, roughly similar to the amount of WBETH minted during the weekend, so the movements did not change significantly the overall amount of staked assets via the exchange.

With 1.2 million ETH stakes, Binance is one of the biggest players on Ethereum’s staking network behind Lido Finance and Coinbase, as per crypto investment firm 21Shares’ Dune dashboard.

Now, WBETH represents around 765,000 of the staked assets, according to data from DefiLlama.