More than $13 billion have been staked on Ethereum 2.0, thanks to the promising network upgrade in 2021. As it has become known, Ethereum is expected to move from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), something that has sparked waves of excitement, as the latter is considered more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Users have now collected more than 6.1 million ethers, up from 5.3 million a month earlier. The total value of the cryptocurrency at the time of writing is $13.52 billion, according to Ethercan.
It is noted that the Ethereum blockchain is undergoing some important changes, collectively known as Ethereum 2.0. The most important thing we must point out, is the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Proof of Stake is an increasingly used alternative algorithm.
With Proof of Stake, mining can only be done by someone who already has coins. The reward is proportional to the number of coins of each, not proportional to the work. This is how the investment is rewarded and not the project. However, Proof of Stake has received a lot of criticism on the grounds that the rich get richer without necessarily participating actively.
Ethereum users are almost always required to stake 32 Ether before they can become validators on the network and earn coins in return.
So far it is estimated that there are 19.000 validators. Ethereum currently uses the Proof of Work protocol, like Bitcoin, where huge amounts of computing power are required in order to solve complex puzzles, secure the network and mine new coins.
