An eleventh-hour surge in deposits has placed Ethereum 2.0 on track for a long-awaited launch on December 1st.
524,000 ETH is required to launch the beacon chain on that date, and 507,000 has been sent to the required address at time of publishing.
Holders who deposit their ETH will be the first to participate in Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake model, which gives investors the ability to help power the network and earn rewards in return.
A number of separate upgrades are expected to be rolled out as Ethereum 2.0 is gradually implemented.
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin says the improvements will allow the second-largest cryptocurrency to handle 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) via second-layer solutions.
“ETH2 scaling for data will be available *before* ETH2 scaling for general computation. This implies that rollups will be the dominant scaling paradigm for at least a couple of years: first ~2-3k TPS with eth1 as data layer, then ~100k TPS with eth2 (phase 1).”
The price of ETH is surging as the number of deposits approaches its required level. At time of publishing, ETH is up 11.71% in the last 24 hours at $617.
Ethereum developers say the current mainnet will officially merge with ETH 2.0’s new beacon chain in 2021 or 2022.
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Tithi Luadthong