The ETH rate jumped sharply after the Ethereum Foundation announced the official launch date for Ethereum 2.0 phase zero. ETH surpassed $400 for the first time since early September.

During 24 hours from November 4 to 5, ETH added 8% in price, rising to $406. The reason of such a rapid growth was that The Ethereum Foundation announced the official date for the Ethereum 2.0 genesis block. On November 4, the Ethereum Foundation developers officially confirmed the launch of the ETH2 deposit contract, which will accumulate ETH tokens for staking. The minimum threshold for participating in staking is 32 ETH.

According to the v1.0.0 specifications of the second version of the protocol, the genesis block will be launched on December 1 at 12:00 UTC. The launch of the mainnet Ethereum 2.0 will be recognized as successful if 16 384 validators participate, who will have to deposit a total of 524 288 ETH to the deposit contract. A day after the announcement of the launch date for ETH 2.0, about 20,000 coins were received on the ETH2 deposit contract.

At the same time, about 250,000 ETH were withdrawn from exchange accounts in 24 hours. This may indicate that investors are interested in participating in staking and plan to withdraw coins from trading floors and send them to a deposit address.

ETH2 marks the emergence of the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism in the Ethereum system. It rewards those who deposit their coins for staking if they check the blocks correctly on the chain.

Ethereum is an open source decentralized blockchain system with its own Ether cryptocurrency. ETH works as a platform for the creation of many other cryptocurrencies, as well as for the execution of decentralized smart contracts.