As Ethereum makes its way to its new version, some important milestones are being reached that lead to its consolidation. Last Sunday, February 27, the number of validators reached 300,000, its historical maximum, and the funds deposited already exceed 9.6 million ethers (ETH).
According to statistics reflected on the site beaconcha.in, the number of current Ethereum 2.0 validators is 300,532. As you can see in the graph below, the milestone of 300,000 validators was reached less than 24 hours ago, at the time of writing this article.
Since its launch in December 2020, Beacon Chain (the first fragment of the 64 that the new blockchain will have) already had 21,000 validators. By December 2021, that number was already at 270,000.; this is equivalent to a growth of 1,100% in one year. Now, two months later, it has grown another 10% to exceed 300,000.
Far from being just a number, this figure is an indicator of a network that is not only growing, but also becoming more secure. Validators are in charge of confirming new blocks in the so-called consensus layer, that is, Ethereum 2.0. Its role is essential for the operation of this consensus algorithm, called proof of participation (PoS, for its acronym in English).
The new version of this blockchain will no longer work with miners like the current one, but will have validators who must have at least 32 ETH in staking (equivalent to USD 85,000 according to the CriptoNoticias price index) in order to confirm new blocks.
Although this increase in the number of validators is important for the network, it is also important that other conditions are met, such as diversity. Recently, CriptoNoticias reported on a “emergency” that some sites saw around the high centralization in Ethereum 2.0, because many staking pools use the same client, Prysm, for their nodes.
However, Coinbase, one of the pools with the largest number of validators, dismissed this alert and assured that it is working to further diversify the clients with which it works.
Deposits in Ethereum 2.0, also at all-time highs
As the number of validators grew, The ethers deposited in the smart contract of the new consensus layer have also reached an unprecedented figure. At the time of writing this note, there were 9,646,594 ETH deposited in it according to etherscan.io, which represents 8.15% of the total stock of the cryptocurrency in circulation.
In the last 10 days, 170,528 ETH were added to this smart contracts. Also, as you can see in the graph below, the number is three times higher than that recorded on the same day (February 28) in 2021.
Of course, such a milestone is directly related to the rise in the number of validators. As detailed, each of them must have 32 ethers to be able to validate new blocks in the chain, so that both figures are directly related.