Ethereum Beacon Chain Adds 50,000 Validators in One Month

Ethereum Beacon Chain Adds Validators increasing at a rapid pace.

Beacon Chain is a blockchain created to usher Proof-of-Stake on the Ethereum network. The chain was created on December 1 2020 and since then, validators have been helping to keep it secure. While it is incapable of handling smart contracts like Ethereum, it is the chain that coordinates the expanded network of shards and stakers for Ethereum 2.0.

The number of validators on the Ethereum Beacon Chain has increased from 300,000 to 350,000 in just one month. The number of validators has increased by 50,000 between March and now, data from the Beacon Chain website shows.

The number of Ethereum 2.0 validators surpassed a milestone of jumping over 300K on March 1st. Since then the number of validators has increased from 300,000 to 350,000 in just one month, currently sitting at 351,813 on April 20th. The Ethereum 2.0 smart contract holds 11,683,378 Eth (11.6M) in ether deposits worth over $$36,250,133,754 ($36.2B) today. Deposits are added regularly every single day into the deposit contract in exact amounts of 32 ether per deposit.

Ethereum Proof-of-Stake growing

The community of Ethereum users and developers has been looking forward to the network’s transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). While the transition is still ongoing, the network currently runs a parallel network consisting of the Ethereum mainnet and the Ethereum Beacon Chain. 

Beacon Chain impact is currently not felt because Ethereum is expected to remove the PoS aspect gradually until PoW fizzles out and allows PoS to take full control. Until then, the PoW remains the dominant chain, which is why the problems with Ethereum such as high transaction fees and slow transactions still persist.

Ethereum developers have come close to the full transition several times but it has always been postponed. However, the increasing number of validators suggests that the PoS system is a welcome development and many more Ethereum users are ready to become validators when the PoS transition is finally achieved.

PoS transition and ETH price

Ethereum (ETH) has grown significantly in the last 3 years. As of 2019, the price was as low as $116 per coin but has risen to the current price of over $3,000. Fans of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization believe the asset is still highly undervalued and the price should be much higher than it is currently.

What seems to be holding Ethereum from such price growth is the delay in the transition to a full PoS network. This has led to other newer blockchains like Binance Smart Chain and Solana competing favorably against Ethereum which has been around since 2013. When the transition happens, many more developers will be willing to use Ethereum, which will likely translate into price gains.