Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract goes live with $6.6m staked

Ethereum has taken one step closer to its highly-anticipated 2.0 upgrade with the deposit contract being released yesterday.

At the time of writing there has been a total of 16,517 ETH tokens to the contract, which equates to around $6.6 million.

The project’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, announced the launch of the deposit contract on Twitter, with the price of Ethereum surging to above $400 within minutes of the tweet.

The contract allows users to deposit, and subsequently stake, 32 ETH before before Ethereum 2.0’s Beacon Chain genesis takes place on December 1.

According to data from analytics firm Glassnode, the number of wallets holding 32 Ethereum has hit a remarkable all-time high above 127,000, surpassing June’s total of 123,500.

Ethereum being held on exchanges is also at an all-time low, suggesting that users are hoping to utilise the project’s proof-of-stake mechanism once Ethereum 2.0 is released.

The rise in decentralised finance (DeFi) in 2020 has demonstrated another key use case for Ethereum with billions of dollars worth of liquidity being directed to decentralised protocols like Yearn Finance and Uniswap.

If ETH 2.0 can solve the arduous issue of scalability and security, the DeFi sector could well be on the brink of a second bullish phase following its recent plunge back to pre-August levels.

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