Five days after Ethereum 2.0’s deposit contract went live, a total of 57,633 ETH has been deposited, representing over 10% of the threshold 524,288 ETH worth around $240 million that is needed for Phase 0 to launch on December 1st.
As the next generation of Ethereum, ETH 2.0 is a multi-year plan that will improve on the limitations of Proof-of-Work (PoS) consensus without compromising on decentralization.
On the official update, ETH 2.0’s lead developer Danny Ryan also announced the Mainnet launch of Eth2 Launch Pad which takes investors through the process of becoming validators.
Since the announcement, addresses with more than 32 ETH are up 5% month over month (MoM), while ETH supply to smart contracts has reduced significantly.
The amount of staked ETH is climbing fast, but the network still needs 471,679 ETH from the total 16,384 validators with a minimum of 32 ETH per validator.
Vitalik Led Validators with 1 Million ETH Stake
Ethereum’s Co-founder Vitalik Buterin deposited 3,200 ETH worth 1M to the contract, shortly after the launch. ETH 2.0 needs validators who are incentivized with high staking rewards to secure and help the network reach consensus.
The upside of early bird staking on ETH 2.0 is reaping huge rewards from the annual percentage yield (APY). At the minimum stake amount, validators will get roughly 36% APY, 18% APY at 1M staked ETH, and 10.2% APY at 2.5M staked ETH.
Following the announcement, the price of ETH hit multiple records with analysts expecting ETH to breach the much anticipated $500 and go as high as $800. ETH is currently up 2.97% trading at $464. Crypto trader and technical analyst Rekt Capital stated:
“$ETH has claimed $433 as support. $ETHUSD is setting itself up for a breakout from this money flow Channel. Once fully confirmed, ETH will rally towards the upside in search of a new Money Flow Channel”
Insufficient Validators Could Cause another Phase 0 Launch Delay
The launch of the deposit contract marked the official migration process of ETH 1.0 to ETH 2.0, with each deployment depending on many factors. The transition will occur in at least four phases; Phase 0, Phase 1, Phase 1.5, and Phase 2 which will carry past 2021.
The road map states that Phase 2 is still in the research phase and even Phase 0’s launch will depend on how many validators will be active on the network before the expected launch date. Danny Ryan wrote:
“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.)”
