Ethereum 2.0 now has more than 6.6 million ETH staked. This is more than 5% of the total supply of the cryptocurrency.
Staked Ethereum Reaches New Milestone: 5% Of The Total Supply
The ETH 2.0 network now has 200k validators accounting for about 6.6 million in Ethereum staked. The current annual percentage return (APR) is about 6.1%.
Here is a chart that shows how the total ETH value staked has changed over the past year:
The ETH deposit contract reaches new milestone | Source: CryptoQuant
As the above graph shows, the Ethereum staking supply is going up quite fast, and it has now crossed 6 million in ETH.
Now, below is a chart that shows the ETH 2.0 staking rate over the same period of time.
The Ethereum staking rate continues to gradually move up | Source: CryptoQuant
According to the graph, the ETH 2.0 locked in staking contracts is now 5.5% of the total supply of the cryptocurrency.
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As mentioned before, the APR right now is around 6.1%. This value is bound to go down as the staking supply increases. When 10 million ETH is locked in the deposit contract, the APR will come down to about 4.9%
The Rise Of Proof Of Stake
ETH 2.0 uses proof of stake (PoS) as its consensus system rather than the traditional proof of work (PoW) mechanism.
Cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum (Core) use PoW for reaching consensus. Validating nodes are called miners , and they require high computing power to hash blocks.
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On the other hand, PoS mechanism requires little computing power. Nodes, called stakers here, only need to stake some of their ETH.
As mining farms with high-end GPUs consume a lot of energy, PoS has emerged as a more efficient, cleaner solution.
Crypto miners have also added to the GPU shortage that’s primarily caused by the global chip scarcity. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang commented on PoS and the shortage around this year’s E3 season.
ETH Price
At the time of writing, ETH’s price floats around $2.3k, up 32% in the last 7 days. In the past month, the crypto has picked up 25% in value.
Here is a chart showing the trend in Ethereum’s price over the past one year:
ETH's price catches an uptrend | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView
Ethereum has started shooting up after a crash earlier in the month. It’s not yet clear if the crypto can keep the momentum up and go on a bull run.
Bitcoin’s price has an effect on other cryptos like ETH too. While BTC seems to be on a rise right now possibly because of the rumors that Amazon will accept crypto payments, it’s unclear how that would continue next as Amazon has now confirmed the contrary.
Featured image from Pexels.com, charts from CryptoQuant.com, TradingView.com