1M ETH staked Ethereum 2.0
ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin says ETH 2.0 is going better than expected (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Ethereum,  Technology

More than 1M ETH staked for Ethereum 2.0

Just 11 days after it struggled to reach the $316 million minimum, the funds stored in the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract are worth more than $611 million

By  / December 4, 2020 /

The Ethereum 2.0 staking contract reached more than one million ETH deposited to secure its new proof-of-stake (PoS) beacon blockchain.

Today — at 5:15 a.m. ET—a transaction that added 32 ETH to the Ethereum 2.0 staking pool caused the contract to exceed one million ETH staked, pushing its total ether value past $611 million, according to data available on block explorer Etherscan.

The launch of Etherereum 2.0’s first version—called Phase 0, or beacon chain—was plagued by numerous delays before the Ethereum Foundation’s lead developer officially called for the launch in mid-September. It launched on Dec. 1. The kick-off of the new blockchain finally became possible when the smart contract reached the minimum of 524,288 ETH staked for launch in late November.

Since then, the new blockchain has already seen some adoption. As Modern Consensus reported at the end of November, China’s top cryptocurrency exchange Huobi announced that it will allow its users to stake ether with just one click on the platform.

The Ethereum blockchain has been the main platform for decentralized application (DApp) and decentralized finance (DeFi) development since they first emerged. Still, the adoption of DApps and DeFi applications proved to exacerbate the scalability problems that it has been plagued by.

As the fees that users have to pay to send on-chain transactions continued to increase and cause problems for Ethereum users, many started to raise questions about the much-delayed ETH 2.0 project’s likelihood of coming to fruition anytime soon.

On the other hand, Joe Lubin, CEO of Ethereum-focused enterprise development firm ConsenSys, said that ETH 2.0 development is moving faster than expected and that it will “absorb Ethereum 1 in the not too distant future,” at the Asia Pacific 2020 conference on Dec. 3, according to Cointelegraph.

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Adrian is a newswriter based out of Pisa, Italy. He's passionate about cryptocurrency, digital rights, IT, tech and futurology and likes to think about the future in a positive way.