5 Million Locked Up in ETH 2.0 Deposit Contract
Over 5 million Ether (ETH) has been sent to the ETH 2.0 deposit contract, surpassing the Ethereum community’s expectations by nearly 1,000% from its previous threshold.
According to data from Dune Analytics, there are now 27,132 “unique” depositors, and a total of 5,223,042 ETH — around US$14 billion at press time. This surpassed the original 524,000 ETH threshold by 996.22%.
Community Optimism for a PoS Shift
The locked up amount shows optimism for shifting Ethereum to ETH 2.0 — a significant upgrade that not only lowers fees and increments scalability, but also implements Proof of Stake, a consensus algorithm where validators are responsible for transaction confirmation instead of miners.
Speaking at the StartmeupHK virtual festival, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Proof of Stake will shrink cryptocurrencies’ carbon footprint in the long run, besides providing other benefits to the blockchain.
“Proof-of-stake is a solution to the environmental issues of Bitcoin, which needs far less resources to maintain.”
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder
Those who want to stake can do so by depositing 32 ETH. By now there are 152,000 validators processing blocks on ETH 2.0, with a 99% success rate for blocks and 1% missed blocks.