Interest in the next iteration of the leading smart contract platform is increasing as tens of millions of Ethereum are now staked in the ETH 2.0 deposit contract.
According to ETH search engine EtherScan, there are now over 10 million staked Ether onto the contract, worth a staggering $26 billion at time of writing.
Ethereum 2.0 looks to solve the network’s scalability issues by shifting over from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (POS) consensus mechanism. According to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, the smart contract platform will eventually be capable of facilitating 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) via second-layer solutions following the completion of the highly-anticipated upgrade.
Market intelligence firm Glassnode that at least 66% of the tokens were deposited onto Ethereum 2.0 by crypto exchange platforms and staking services rather than individuals.
Glassnode’s data reveals that the largest deposit comes from staking platform Lido, followed by top US exchange Coinbase. Other notable large-scale depositors include leading digital assets exchange BINANCE and San Francisco-based crypto exchange Kraken.
Crypto analytics firm IntoTheBlock finds that tens of thousands of unique addresses contributed to the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract.
“The amount of ETH staked in the 2.0 contract has surpassed the $10 million mark.
More than 65,910 unique addresses have contributed to this achievement, which translates into 8.4% of the circulating supply staked.”
The first phase of Ethereum’s upgrade to version 2.0 was rolled out in late 2020 to help reduce the blockchain’s congestion and high transaction fees. The next phase is slated to come out sometime in 2022 and will focus on the transition to becoming a proof-of-stake protocol.
Ethereum is exchanging hands at $2,594 at time of writing, a 7.5% decrease from its seven-day peak of $2,759.
