ETH 2.0 grows twenty times in a year

ETH 2.0 blockchain, called Beacon Chain, is growing every day as its implementation as the main blockchain of the largest cryptocurrency focused on smart contracts approaches.

Comparing its size in February 2021 with the same month in 2022, ETH 2.0 managed to have a steady growth, increasing in size during every month of the year, even as the price of ETH retreated.

As the explorer data points out BeaconScan, the current network size is 1676 gigabytes. This means that during the last year it has increased by 2,164%. That is, it grew about 22 times, since on February 15, 2021 it had only 74 gigabytes.

Beacon Chain was released in December 2020 as part of the Serenity update on ETH 2.0. Currently its development is in phase 0, which focuses on the participation of validators that will serve as a basis for future phases.

Beaconchain grows – 294,495 validators

Also according to BeaconScan, the Beacon Chain currently has 294,495 validators. This represents a growth of over 1,300% since the network’s founding. After all, during its launch, the network had just over 21,000 validators.

However, it is unknown who the majority of validators are as they keep their identity private. Despite this, major exchanges like Binance and OKEx are known to be ETH 2.0 validators and allow their users to participate in validator pools.

Beaconcha.in has reported that over 60% of validators are operating with addresses not tied to a staking pool. Staking is the name given to the new type of “mining” of the ETH network (based on PoS).

In this phase of ETH 2.0, validators or “miners” are incentivized with staking rewards and transaction fees.

The validator is any person or entity that deposits 32 ETH into the corresponding smart contract. Although it should be noted that the ETH 2.0 network is not yet fully operational.