Major Milestone: Over 10 Million ETH Staked in Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract

The deposit contract for staking on Beacon chain – the blockchain providing the spine of the Ethereum 2.0 ecosystem – has now collected over 10 million ETH. That’s $26 billion of staked value at current prices.

• Ethereum 2.0 is a long-awaited Ethereum upgrade that will convert Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from proof of work to proof of stake.
• Beacon chain will be the core of the Ethereum 2.0 chain, which is set to merge with the existing Ethereum chain and replace miners by July of this year.
• Though Ethereum 2.0 is not officially released, ETH holders are already enabled to stake their holdings on the beacon chain. As of writing, the contract holds 10,021,538 ETH, equivalent to $26,124,946,981.62.
• Whereas proof of work requires “miners” to expend electricity mining blocks, proof of stake places block validation in the hands of those that stake their ETH holdings. Vitalik Buterin believes this will reduce Ethereum’s carbon footprint while providing it with more transaction scalability.
• However, the founder said the same thing about Ethereum’s London hard fork upgrade, which failed to meaningfully reduce the network’s gas fees.
• Compared to other proof of stake coins, Ethereum 2.0 currently has the third-highest staked value on its network. It is only surpassed by Solana and Terra, while already outstripping Cardano.
• All Beacon chain validators are running a full node, meaning Ethereum’s node count should increase exponentially upon Ethereum 2.0’s arrival.