The smart contract developed to activate the first phase of Ethereum 2.0 has already raised a sufficient amount of funds to begin the implementation of the most ambitious Ethereum update (here the quotation of cryptocurrencies in real time), which will radically change the economic model, use of resources and governance of Ethereum.
Great participation for the Ethereum 2.0 deposit agreement
The Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Agreement, which was released earlier this month, raised over 540.000 ETH (worth over $ 325 million) by late Monday night, ensuring that the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain can be launched next week.
Doing so will formally initiate the second biggest shift for a cryptocurrency, moving from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake in hopes of solving a number of issues, including one regarding scalability.
The Ethereum Foundation had previously set a soft launch date for December 1, assuming the deposit agreement would raise 524.288 ETH by November 24. In fact, the foundation reached its goal well in advance, after more than 150.000 ETH were deposited over a 24-hour period.
The last 25% of the amount of ETH needed to activate the contract was paid in four hours. The price of Ethereum rose nearly 10% on Monday, surpassing $ 600 for the first time in two years.
Beacon chains
The launch of Ethereum 2.0 will activate a parallel proof-of-stake blockchain called a “beacon chain” which will initially work alongside the existing Ethereum network. The initial stages of its development will have no impact on existing users and decentralized applications based on Ethereum.
The main stakeholders of the beacon chain at the launch of Ethereum 2.0 will be validators, the equivalent of miners on a proof-of-stake network. Like miners, validators earn rewards on the network in exchange for processing transactions and creating new blocks.
To become an Ethereum 2.0 validator, a user must wager a minimum of 32 ETH via the deposit agreement. In the initial phase of the network, validators are expected to earn around 20% annual reward on their staked ETH.
More than 21.000 validators will secure the network at launch. Activating the beacon chain is the first of the four phases of the migration to Ethereum 2.0, which begins with the onboarding of the validators and ultimately leads to the complete transition of all users and dapps to the new network.
There are several theories about how crypto markets will react to Ethereum's dual blockchain system in transition, before the full migration is complete. Speaking of uncertainty, Danny Ryan, Ethereum 2.0 coordinator and developer of the Ethereum Foundation, explained in an interview in July the importance of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which will add enormous intrinsic value to the system, allowing Ethereum to be the backbone of a decentralized internet.
