As a result of its high number of Ether holdings, the Eth2 staking contract has become the most important address.
The staking contract for the Ethereum 2.0 network has now surpassed all other holders of Ether to become the single largest holder of the cryptocurrency today.
In the eyes of blockchain analytics service Nansen, the Eth2 staking contract has eclipsed Wrapped Ethereum (wETH) to become the single largest holder of ETH, surpassing the Wrapped Ethereum (wETH).
Due to its conformance to the ERC-20 standard, Wrapped Ether is the preferred representation of ETH among DeFi protocols that make use of ERC-20 tokens, as opposed to other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum.
Alexandre Svanevik, the CEO of blockchain analytics startup Nansen, shared his results with the world on Twitter on August 17. According to the statistics, the Beacon Chain’s deposit contract currently has 6.73 million ETH in it, which is worth around $21.5 billion at current exchange rates.
The Wrapped Ethereum contract, according to Nansen’s statistics, currently has 6.7 million ETH ($21.4 billion), followed by Binance, which holds 2.29 million ETH ($7.3 billion).
Check who’s #1 ETH holder now guys! pic.twitter.com/3isDLkrv7I
— Alex Svanevik ✨ (@ASvanevik) August 16, 2021According to CoinMarketCap, the amount of Ether currently locked up in Eth2 accounts for 5.7 percent of Ethereum’s total circulating supply. According to Beaconcha.in, there are now 210,000 validators for the Eth2 network in operation.
At the moment, Ether invested in Eth2 is locked up and cannot be removed from the contract until Ethereum’s next chain-merge, which will unite the Ethereum and Eth2 networks, takes place. The chain merger is now projected to take place within the first half of 2022, according to current expectations.
In terms of staked capitalisation, according to Staking Rewards, Eth2 is presently the third-largest Proof-of-Stake network in the world, trailing only Cardano ($49 billion) and Solana ($27.5 billion), respectively.
The announcement comes just a few days after Ethereum’s Eth2 roadmap reached a significant milestone, with the network successfully installing its London enhancements on August 5.
There were two major changes in this hard fork: the much anticipated Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 and the introduction of a base transaction fee that is burnt from supply and placed into the Ethereum fee market.
The cryptocurrency tracking website Ultrasound. Money estimates that 54,916 ETH worth $175 million had been destroyed by transaction fees in the dozen days since London went live on the blockchain. If the current burn rate of 3.28 ETH is maintained, more than 140,000 ETH might be burned each month if network activity remains constant at its current level.
At the time of writing, ETH prices had fallen by 3.3 percent over the previous 24 hours and were trading at $3,180 per token.
