https://ift.tt/34huqsu Billion Worth Of ETH Is Locked In Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contracts

$34 billion worth of ETH is locked in Ethereum 2.0 deposit contracts reaching a new all-time high as we are reading more in our latest Ethereum news today.

According to the recent data, the total amount of ETH locked in the Etheruem 2.0 deposit contract is approaching the nine million mark which means more than 7% of the total ETH supply is now staked in the ETH 2.0 contract. The recent data from Glassnode revealed that the amount locked reached $34 billion worth of ETH at current prices. The figure represents a 70% increase since last June and more than 1500% from the initial target of $524,000 that is needed for phase 0.

The total number of unique depositors also has more than doubled within the past six months as it jumped from 27,132 in June to 59,867 at the time of writing. More validators joined the party with the figure moving from 152,000 validators back in June to 276,197 validators today despite the annual yield being 5%. The increasing number of unique depositors, ETH balance, and validators on the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract is the indicator that the investors and the ETH community are bullish on the native token in the long term. Both deposits and rewards can be withdrawn only after phase 1.5 of the network upgrade that will go live.

The reports from August also show that the whales are locking their Ether with more than 95,000 ETH staked in one day. In the meantime, the users continue to stay bullish and Ethereum developers are working a lot to make 2.0 a reality. With phase 0 already completed in late 2020, the Altair upgrade on the Beacon Chain was successfully deployed back in October. The recent reports show that the upcoming transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake will expose the Ethereum network to potential attacks and one developer even claimed otherwise. He reassured the community that the merger will be safe and also said there’s a possibility of a fix before the event that is scheduled to happen in the first or second quarter of this year.

As recently reported, Defi blue chips underperformed by over 110% despite its strong fundamentals. The DeFi Pulse Index that tracks the performance of 18 DeFi blue chips, retraced over 55% from the ATH that it made in 2021. Curve was the only blue-chip protocol to outperform ETH in 2021 marking an increase of over 900% year to date. Decentralized Finance saw its biggest year to date in terms of user growth and adoption in 2021 but most defi blue chips tokens are down by 50% in dollar terms from the previous highs they made.