Over $2 billion worth of ETH has been staked in Ethereum 2.0 just over a month since the Beacon Chain went live.
The Ethereum blockchain is the middle of a gradual evolution from its current proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to proof-of-stake (PoS) – with the aim of making the blockchain more scalable, secure and sustainable.
Beacon Chain
The first step of the move to Ethereum 2.0 took place on December 1, 2020 when the Beacon Chain officially went live. The Beacon Chain officially introduced staking to the Ethereum blockchain by allowing users to stake their ETH in order to activate validator software. To become a full validator, users had to stake a total of 32 ETH.
Validators will eventually take the role of current PoW miners and will process transactions and create new blocks on the Ethereum network’s blockchain.
In order for the Beacon Chain to go live last year, 524,000 ETH had to be deposited. As of January 6, 2021 users had already staked over 2,2 mln ETH tokens according to data from stakingrewards, taking the total value of staked ETH to over $2.5 bln.
Crunching the numbers
Data from Ethereum analytics provider Dune Analytics provides a comprehensive breakdown of the current state of ETH staking. A total of 2,245,602 ETH has been staked to date. Interestingly only 4,502 unique depositors have contributed to this total. Major players like Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (3200 ETH) have contributed large amounts to the pool.
Data from Dune analytics shows that the highest individual contributor has staked a total of 59,392 ETH to Ethereum 2.0.
