According to Etherscan, the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract now contains over 9 million ETH, which is worth $30 billion at current prices.
This new development implies that 9 million ETH have been locked and won’t be transferable until the successful transition of the network to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
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9 Million ETH Now in the Deposit Contract
The deposit contract gives ETH holders the means to support the network upgrade by transferring funds from the Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) to Beacon Chain, a parallel-running proof-of-stake version of the blockchain.
The Beacon Chain has been in operation since it launched on 1st December 2020. And it’s being run by the Ethereum core team alongside PoW mainnet that currently hosts all Ethereum decentralized applications (DApps).
At the time of filing this report, the on-chain data on Etherscan shows that the sum of 9,014,082 ETH has been locked in the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract. This implies that relatively $30 billion has been staked under the initial phase of Eth2, also known as Serenity.
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The whopping contribution involved over 281,000 validators as seen on Beacon Chain. An Ethereum holder must deposit at least 32 ETH to become a validator.
Public Testnet of “The Merge” Currently Running
On 20th December 2021, the public testnet of “The Merge”, also referred to as the full transition from proof of work to proof of stake (PoS), was launched. The achievement was the first of its kind in two years of development.
Tim Beiko, an Ethereum core developer who announced the launch on Twitter, urged users to start using Kintsugi in order to familiarize themselves with the Ethereum network in a post-merge context.
Going by the report, not much will change for application developers. Also, tooling, which only interacts with either the consensus or execution layer is also largely unaffected. Although the infrastructure that depends on both layers will likely need to adapt to support The Merge.
Tim Beiko noted:
“We recommend most projects begin testing and prototyping on Kintsugi to surface any potential issues soon. This way, changes can more easily be incorporated in future client and specification versions.”
The Merge is designed to remove miners from having any role to play on the Ethereum network. The major upgrade will make validation to be performed by stakers that deposit 32 ETH.
