By Tobi Loba
The road to the launch of Ethereum 2.0 is getting clearer. The deposit contract address of ETH 2.0 has already received 42,272 ETH according to the data from the on-chain market analysis firm, CryptoQuant.
This is about 2 days after the co-creator of Ethereum (ETH), Vitalik Buterin, sent his own contribution to the deposit contract address.
About Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0 is the anticipated upgrade of Ethereum blockchain from the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol.
Read Also: Vitalik Buterin Adds 3,200 ETH worth $1.3 Million to the Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract Address
This upgrade has the potential to significantly enhance the scalability of the blockchain, which will enable Ethereum to process more transactions per second, giving larger decentralized applications (Dapps) the room to perform with little or no interference.
This upgrade will change the narrative around ETH from mining to staking. This implies that users will be allowed to allocate their ETH holdings to the Ethereum contract. Through this, users will be able to verify transactions on the blockchain instead of usual miners. Afterward, they will receive incentives for locking their funds into the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract.
Ethereum 2.0 Launch on Track as Scheduled
The number of ETH already locked into the contract indicates that the launch is still on track as scheduled. On 7th November 2020, a total of 42,272 ETH worth relatively $19 million has reportedly been sent into the ETH 2.0 contract address.
This data shows the huge interest of Ethereum holders in allocating their holdings in order to aid the launch and to participate in ETH 2.0.
Danny Ryan, the coordinator of Ethereum 2.0, who made the announcement on 4th November said the network needs 16,384 validators with at least 32 ETH deposits on or before 1st December 2020.
In the announcement, he wrote:
“Today, we released v1.0 of the eth2 specs, including the mainnet deposit contract address – 0x00000000219ab540356cBB839Cbe05303d7705Fa. eth2 will have a MIN_GENESIS_TIME of 1606824000 (or for those of you who don’t think in unix time – December 1, 2020, 12pm UTC). To trigger genesis at this time, there must be at least 16384 32-ETH validator deposits 7 days prior to December 1. If not, genesis will be triggered 7 days after this threshold has been met (whenever that may be).”
Obviously, the ETH staking address is still far from the minimum amount needed. According to crypto trader and analyst, Edward Morra, the network needs at least 524,288 ETH deposits before the launch of Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 could play out.
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Morra noted:
“42272 $ETH deposited and there are 176 validators. In order to launch the mainnet, there should be 524288 ETH staked and 16384 validators participating.”
So, considering the time needed to amass the required ETH and the inflow of deposits from holders, it can be concluded that the much-awaited launch is still on track.