Eth2 staking contract becomes the largest single holder of ETH, holding about $21.5 billion worth of ETH

The staking contract on the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain is now the largest single holder of ETH.

According to data from blockchain analytics provider Nansen, Eth2 staking contracts have surpassed Wrapped Ethereum (wETH) to become the largest single holder of ETH. Unlike ETH, wETH follows the ERC-20 standard, making it the most popular representation of ETH in DeFi protocols that use ERC-20 tokens.

Alex Svanevik, CEO of blockchain analytics firm Nansen, tweeted the findings on August 17. The data shows that the beacon chain’s deposit contract holds 6.73 million ETH, worth about $21.5 billion at current prices.

By comparison, Wrapped Ethereum contracts hold 6.7 million ETH ($21.4 billion), followed by Binance at 2.29 million ETH ($7.3 billion), according to Nansen.

Let’s see who are the largest ETH holders right now! — Alex Svanevik? (@ASvanevik) August 16, 2021

According to CoinMarketCap, the amount of ETH staked on Eth2 currently accounts for 5.7% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. According to Beaconcha.in, there are currently 210,000 validators on the Eth2 network.

Currently, ETH staked on Eth2 is locked and cannot be withdrawn from the contract until Ethereum’s upcoming chain merge, which will merge the Ethereum and Eth2 networks. Currently, the chain merge is expected to take place in the first half of 2022.

According to Staking Rewards, Eth2 is currently the third-largest proof-of-stake network in terms of staked market capitalization, behind Cardano at $49 billion and Solana at $27.5 billion.

The news comes shortly after a major milestone in Ethereum’s Eth2 roadmap, with the Ethereum network successfully deploying its London upgrade on August 5.

The London hard fork included the much-anticipated Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559, which introduced base transaction fees.

According to Ultrasound.Money, 54,916 ETH worth $175 million have been destroyed through transaction fees in the ten days since the London upgrade went live. At the current destruction rate of 3.28 ETH/minute, if network activity remains consistent, more than 140,000 ETH may be destroyed each month.

At the time of writing, ETH price has retreated 3.3% over the past 24 hours and is trading at $3,180.