ETH 2.0 staking contract

... which will fundamentally change the economic model, resource usage and governance of Ethereum.

The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract was released in early November, and has accumulated more than 540,000 ETH (valued at more than 325 M USD $) on Monday night, ensuring that the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain will be launched next week, officially starting the transfer of Ethereum From the consensus mechanism of proof of work to the mechanism of proof-of-stake with the aim of solving a number of issues, including scalability.

The Ethereum Foundation had previously set a soft launch date for Dec. 1, assuming the deposit contract saw 524,288 ETH staked by Nov. 24. It hit the target with hours to spare, after more than 150,000 ETH were deposited in a 24-hour period.

The last 25% of the ETH needed to trigger the contract was deposited in four hours. The contract held just as of 22:45 UTC on Monday.

The network itself has not yet started. The launch of Ethereum 2.0 will activate a parallel proof-of-stake blockchain, called the "beacon chain", which runs in parallel with the existing Ethereum network. The initial stage of its development will not affect existing users and decentralized applications on Ethereum.

What does it mean though for the future of NFTs?

It means that we will be able to do all the basic NFT functions plus a few more for way cheaper and faster than we are today. It is definitely a historic date and the future of ETH looks super bright if all thats expected is actually delivered.

If one looks around will notice that all the projects are currently building bridges to ETH and if they are not it's probably because their project/coin is dead. Most numbers of developers and most active development is happening on Ethereum and solidity now and that's a fact. The real milestone or the cherry on the top however will be EIP 1559, which will smooth out and automate the gas fee auction system and burn fees creating a more beneficial environment for the users.

EIP-1559 on Github

As every ETH fanboy we are waiting anxiously for the effects on the network to take place. Defi apps are only getting started and this upcoming Bull run feels like it will be the mother of all pumps. All the elements for a perfect storm are in place and the communities have never been more ready. If we go back to the 2017 ICO insanity we will notice that things died down for a a few months before picking up with more steam than before, which might be the case here again only difference though is that ICO is replaced with Defi.