Ethereum Jumps 5% With 15,000 ETH Staked Early For Beacon Chain Launch

The long-awaited initial stages of the ETH 2.0 launch began on November 4 as the official staking deposit contract went live. Ethereum prices reacted with a 5% pump to top $400 again.

The highly anticipated deposit smart contract launch introduced the ability for ETH holders to deposit 32 Ether required to participate in staking by becoming a network validator.

A minimum threshold of 16,384 validators depositing of 32 ETH is required a week before the genesis of the ETH 2.0 blockchain can occur. This equates to a total of 524,288 ETH, or about $210 million worth at today’s prices.

An essential piece of #Ethereum’s Serenity upgrade, the Beacon Chain’s deposit contract, is live. This begins a transition to #Eth2.@EthDotOrg Guide: https://t.co/PkKwLnXKS4
Launchpad: https://t.co/CFgFwAs46f
Deposit Contract Address: 0x00000000219ab540356cBB839Cbe05303d7705Fa

— Ethereum (@ethereum) November 4, 2020

Once this threshold is met and held for seven days, the Beacon Chain will launch. Lead developers have set a target of December 1 for this to happen.

$6 Million Staked Early

Within the first 24 hours of the contract going live, over 15,300 ETH, or roughly $6 million, has been deposited according to the Eth2 Launchpad. This works out to be around 3% of the total required so there is a long way to go yet.

According to Glassnode, the number of Ethereum addresses holding at least 32 ETH hit an all-time high of almost 127k indicating that investors are preparing to stake.

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has setup the domain name depositcontract.eth to make interaction with the contract address easier.

ConsenSys warned about fake contracts and have setup a page so that validators can verify the correct address to deposit their ETH. It advises using the Launchpad (linked to above) to stake rather than attempting to interact with the address directly.

Ethereum investor Ryan Sean Adams (RSA) has published a guide on how to become a validator on his Bankless newsletter. The process is quite convoluted and requires hardware, power, and bandwidth so it is likely that the masses will not be staking until there are easier ways to do it, such as services offered through exchanges.

RSA commented that this is the beginning of Ethereum’s shift into becoming its own global economy;

“This is the initial bond offering for the largest non-sovereign global economy the world has ever seen. No longer a commodity. No longer a money. ETH becomes a capital asset too. ETH is a triple-point asset.”

ETH Price Reaction

As expected, Ethereum prices pumped by 5% to top out at $408 however they have not made any further gains over the past 12 hours since the official announcement. A return below $400 is looking likely and the asset could fall even further before the bigger news in early December when Phase 0 finally gets underway.