The amount of ETH staked on Ethereum 2.0 (Beacon Chain) has surpassed 5 million, according to Eth2 Launchpad. Notably, at the current price of $2,821.47, the staked ETH is worth over $14 billion.
Also, ETH 2.0 aims to address Ethereum’s scaling problems. Currently, Ethereum is crippled by congestion, slow transaction speed, and high gas (transaction) fees. However, ETH 2.0 promises to take Ethereum transaction speed up to 100,000 transactions per second. Plus, the upgrade will decrease energy use by 99.95%
Of note, crypto energy consumption has become a hot topic with Bitcoin under fire for its ‘excessive’ energy use. Currently, Ethereum uses the Proof of Work protocol responsible for Bitcoin’s high energy use. However, the ETH 2.0 migration, fortunately, will move Ethereum to the more energy-efficient PoS (Proof of Stake) protocol.
To this end, The Beacon Chain deployed on Dec 1, introducing PoS to Ethereum. Staking ETH on Beacon Chain activates the blockchain’s validator software. Once activated, the software enables stakers to validate transactions, thus adding new blocks and rewarding stakers.
Ultimately, the ETH mainnet and Beacon Chain will merge enabling the mainnet to become a PoS platform. However, the upgraded mainnet will be controlled and coordinated by the Beacon Chain.
Meanwhile, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commented on the obstacles to the ETH 2.0 roadmap. Apart from technical difficulties, Buterin also cited human problems as a reason for the delays in rolling out the upgrade. As a result, Buterin believes the roadmap will take up to 6 years to implement.
This article was first published on coinquora.com
Continue reading on CoinQuora
Source: Cryptocurrency - investing.com
