Recently, the Ethereum network reached a new staking milestone. On Aug. 17, the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract became the single largest holder of Ether, surpassing Wrapped Ether (WETH). According to data from Etherscan, the Eth2 deposit contract now holds over 7.14 million Ether tokens, valued at $23 billion at the time of writing.
This accounts for nearly 6.1% of all Ether tokens in circulation, which means that the staking rate for Ethereum is now over 6%. The Wrapped Ether deposit contract comes in second, holding 6.97 million tokens — i.e., 5.94% of all Ether. Data from Beaconcha.in reveals that there are now 217,354 validators on the Ethereum network.
Right away, this has made Ether the third most staked cryptocurrency. According to data from Staking Rewards, the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract ranks third, just after Cardano and Solana, which have been proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains since their inception. In contrast to the $23 billion in ETH staked, there is over $26 billion worth of SOL staked and $63 billion in ADA staked on their respective networks.
