To launch the update on December 1, 524,000 ETH must be placed on a special deposit smart contract. The threshold was reached only nine hours before the deadline.

The planned update on the Ethereum network is confirmed for December 1st. A few days ago, community members had doubts that Ethereum would be able to collect the amount of ETHs required for the update on a special deposit smart contract.

To launch the update by December 1, 524,000 ETH was required. As Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin explained, the launch will take place 7 days after the activation, which starts after the required number of coins are collected. According to Etherscan, the first seven days demonstrated slow activity of stakers. Only 50,000 ETH were sent to the deposit smart contract. But in recent days, community members stepped up their efforts, and on November 24, the number of coins on the deposit smart contract exceeded the required 524,000 ETH. As of November 25, more than 723,600 ETH were stored on it.

Ethereum 2.0 was successfully launched as a testnet aimed at detecting problems in the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. On December 1, Ethereum 2.0 blockchain will begin the transition to the Proof-of-Stake consensus.

Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0 will launch the beacon chain, which will establish and maintain the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. As it is explained in Benzinga article, in Phase 0, the beacon chain will majorly function as a coordinating and registering system for validators and staked coins. Phase 1, expected to go live sometime in 2021, will serve as the implementation process of the shard chains, designed to run as interconnected blockchain that will share the load on the Ethereum ecosystem. Once these shards are fully functional, all nodes will only have to download the transaction history of a subset of shards to engage and execute transactions on the Ethereum network. Scheduled for 2021 is phase 1.5, where the current Ethereum 1.0 chain will transition into a shard and henceforth utilize PoS as its supported consensus mechanism. It is worth mentioning that it is impossible to withdraw the coins staked on the deposit contract address until phase 1.5 goes live.