ETH 2.0 Deposit Contract Reaches New Milestone Ahead of Much-Anticipated Merge Event

More than 13 million Ether (ETH) has now been locked on Ethereum’s Eth 2.0 staking contract, according to data provided by cryptocurrency analytics firm Glassnode.

This comes just four months after the staking contract surpassed in early May.

Eth 2.0 staking was launched back in November 2020 after a successful consensus vote.

Lido, a non-custodial liquid staking protocol for Ethereum, Solana, and other chains, accounts for the biggest share of staked ETH (31.8%).

In the meantime, Ethereum has moved even closer to the upcoming transition by testing the merge on the Sepolia testnet.

Those deposits represent 10.9% of the total circulating supply.

Now, the network has to go through one more testnet launch before the much-awaited launch event. Ethereum will transition to proof-of-stake as soon as the Beacon Chain merges with the main chain.  

Ethereum was supposed to switch to the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm years ago, but the process has suffered from multiple delays.

The merge is now widely expected to take place later this year.

As reported by U.Today, Vitalik Buterin predicted that Ethereum could move to the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm in August, but it now seems like the high-stakes upgrade has been delayed to at least September.

The upgrade is expected to dramatically bring down Ethereum’s energy consumption. However, there are also those who claim that proof-of-stake is far less secure compared to proof-of-work.