Key Takeaways
- The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract currently contains 9,008,082 ETH, or about $30.2 billion.
- This deposit contract allows users to transfer funds from Ethereum mainnet to Beacon Chain, a parallel Proof-of-Stake network.
- Ethereum is expected to switch to Proof-of-Stake with a proposed merge with Beacon Chain, tentatively scheduled in June 2022.
Share this article
As of today, the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract contains about 9 million ETH, equivalent to about $30.2 billion.
Users Stake $30 Billion For ETH 2.0
9 million ETH have been locked in the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract.
This deposit contract allows users to transfer funds from the Ethereum Proof-of-Work mainnet to Beacon Chain, a parallel-running Proof-of-Stake version of the blockchain. The Ethereum core team has operated Beacon Chain since Dec. 1, 2020 in addition to the Proof-of-Work mainnet that currently hosts all Ethereum dApps.
The highly-anticipated “merge” refers to the future event in which the Ethereum mainnet begins using the Beacon Chain for consensus, effectively eliminating Proof-of-Work within the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to the latest on-chain data on Etherscan, 9,008,082 ETH have been locked in Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract. At current ETH prices, the deposits represent about $30 billion staked under the initial phase of Ethereum 2.0–also known as Serenity.
The deposited 9 million ETH has been contributed by more than 280,000 validators on Beacon Chain. To become a validator, a user needs to deposit a minimum of 32 ETH, valued at around $108,000 currently.
Ethereum’s Future Roadmap
Ethereum, the largest public blockchain, is planning to switch to Proof-of-Stake–a consensus system that requires validators to stake their funds on the network in order to validate new transactions. In comparison, the present consensus mechanism, called Proof-of-Work, validates transitions using miners that leverage computing power from specialized hardware chips to solve complex computational problems.
It is hoped that the phased upgrade to Proof-of-Stake may lead to faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient transactions on the blockchain. ETH 2.0 will also open Ethereum to sharding, a scaling mechanism in which the network is split into smaller portions.
Recent Updates: Arrow Glacier & Kintsugi
Before merging the two chains, the Ethereum community has been working on tooling to ensure a smooth transition and to check for potential bugs in the rollout.
Two important events took place in December 2021 in the lead-up to the Proof-of-Stake merge. The first was the Ethereum Improvement Proposal-4345. Codenamed Arrow Glacier, the EIP-4345 was initiated on Dec. 8. This upgrade postponed Ethereum’s “Difficulty Bomb” until June 2022 from its earlier planned date set in December. The Difficulty Bomb is a planned feature that will make Ethereum Proof-of-Work mining more difficult and less profitable. The mechanism is intended to ensure a smooth transition to…
Read More: cryptobriefing.com