The amount of ETH on the Ethereum 2.0 deposit smart contract, launched at the end of 2020, exceeded 5 million. At the current exchange rate, this is more than $13 billion.

According to the Ethereum network data, the amount of Ether (ETH) on the Ethereum 2.0 special deposit smart contract reached 5.2 million ETH worth $13.6 billion. This is about 4.5% of all ETH coins circulating in the market.

The special smart contract was launched in November 2020 as part of the massive Ethereum 2.0 update that will bring the network from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake consensus. As of December 1, 2020, when the Phase Zero of the update was rolled out, more than 900,000 ETH were deposited to the contract. The minimum deposit amount was 32 ETH.

According to the block explorer Beaconchain, there are currently 152,000 block validators in the Proof-of-Stake network. The participation rate of validators ranges from 98.7% to 99.5%.

The reward to stakers is up to 23%, but currently the yield dropped to 7% per annum. It is worth to mention that both deposits and rewards are available for withdrawal only after the Phase 1.5 of the Ethereum 2.0 update begins. It is scheduled for 2022.

The Proof-of-Stake consensus is considered to be more environmentally friendly, as it does not require the energy-intensive computing power of mining power to process transactions.