Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract Surpasses $30B in Value

Users Stake $30 Billion For ETH 2.0

The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract has 9 million ETH locked in it.

Users can move funds from the Ethereum Proof-of-Work mainnet to Beacon Chain, a Proof-of-Stake version of the blockchain that runs in parallel. In addition to the Proof-of-Work mainnet, which currently hosts all Ethereum dApps, the Ethereum core team has been running Beacon Chain since December 1, 2020.

The much-anticipated ‘merge’ is a future event in which the Ethereum mainnet switches to the Beacon Chain for consensus, effectively removing Proof-of-Work from the Ethereum ecosystem.

According to Etherscan's most recent on-chain data, 9,008,082 ETH has been locked in the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract. The deposits, valued at almost $30 billion at current ETH values, represent the first phase of Ethereum 2.0, also known as Serenity.

More than 280,000 validators on Beacon Chain contributed to the 9 million ETH deposited. A user must deposit a minimum of 32 ETH, which is presently worth roughly $108,000, to become a validator.

Ethereum’s Imminent Roadmap

Ethereum, the world's largest public blockchain, plans to convert to Proof-of-Stake consensus, which forces validators to stake their cash on the network in order to confirm new transactions. In contrast, the current consensus mechanism, known as Proof-of-Work, certifies transitions by enabling miners to solve complicated computational tasks using computer power from specialized hardware chips.

The gradual transition to Proof-of-Stake is expected to result in faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient blockchain transactions. With ETH 2.0, Ethereum will be able to use sharding, a scalability strategy that divides the network into smaller chunks.

Recent Updates: Arrow Glacier and Kintsugi

The Ethereum community has been working on tooling to facilitate a smooth transition and to check for potential issues in the deployment before joining the two chains.

In the months leading up to the Proof-of-Stake merging, two significant events occurred in December 2021. The Ethereum Improvement Proposal-4345 was the first. The EIP-4345, codenamed Arrow Glacier, was launched on December 8. The 'Difficulty Bomb' for Ethereum was postponed from December to June 2022 as a result of this upgrade. The Difficulty Bomb is a planned feature that will increase the difficulty and cost of Ethereum Proof-of-Work mining. By disincentivizing resistance from miners, the technique aims to ensure a seamless transition to Proof-of-Stake. The EIP-4345 update also included a timeframe, indicating that the Proof-of-Stake integration might take place as early as June 2022.

Second, Kintsugi, a public testnet for ETH 2.0, was launched on December 20. This testnet allowed the Ethereum community and users to publicly experiment with post-merge Ethereum in order to uncover any problems. In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden said the team had discovered and corrected flaws in the ETH 2.0 client software that hampered nodes' ability to sync with the network.

The specific date of the merger is unknown, but it is largely expected to occur this year, with a probable date of June.