Total Ethereum in Deposit Contracts Surpasses 1 Million

It is no news that the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 (ETH 2.0) is up with the Phase 0 or the Beacon Chain coming live days ago. According to the report on the launch of the new Ethereum Proof-of-Stake network, the Beacon Chain was activated as the minimum deposit number of Ethereum in the deposit contract surpassed the 524,288 minimum.

ETH 2.0 Deposit Benchmark Met and Surpassed

For the slow pace of response the deposit contract for ushering in the ETH 2.0 network recorded, the recent advances are but more than impressive. According to a report by The Block, the deposit contract for ETH 2.0 is seeing more Ethereum deposits even after the benchmark has been surpassed.

At the time of writing, over 1 million Ether has been sent to the Phase 0 deposit contract with a value estimated at $605 million. According to the report, there is no set-out deadline to stop receiving funds into the deposit contract. As such, people can continue to make deposits to become validators in the new network that has been unveiled, and with this, there is no accurate projection to detail how much of funds will be locked up into the ETH 2.0 deposit contract respectively.

As a Proof-of-Stake network, the stakers are entitled to an annual return on their investments. While this yield has not been explicitly stated by the Ethereum foundation, there are indications that the early stakers will earn up to 20% per annum with the rate set to be slashed as more people enter the network. Owing to the potential trust in the basics and the model of the Ethereum network which will become more scalable when the migration is complete, many people do not want to miss out on the earning potential opportunities the network is offering at this time.

For emphasis sake, stakers or investors making a bet on the Ethereum 2.0 network will not be able to cash out until about 2022 when the migration process would have advanced further.

What Is Next for Ethereum 2.0?

Now that the Beacon Chain is live, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin highlighted what has been achieved in the roadmap to Ethereum 2.0 he revealed back in March. According to the genius programmer, a lot has been accomplished and the Phase 0 enthusiasts should expect the launch of layer 2 scaling solutions like Rollups following the Beacon Chain

With the full implementation of the scaling solutions, the Ethereum network will now be able to process up to 10,000 transactions per second. Afterward, the merger of the PoW and the PoS will occur to bring an end to Ethereum’s current Proof-of-Work consensus.

Nonetheless, Justin Drake, Eth2 researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, told the Block in an interview that the team has done more than half of the work needed to complete the transition into the PoS model, even though the rest of the process may take a couple more years to accomplish.

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