More than 5 million ETH has been sent to Ethereum 2.0’s deposit contract
The amount of ether (ETH) in the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract has broken above the 5 million mark, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. The current amount in the contract is 5.2 million ETH, worth $13.6 billion. One ETH is currently priced at $2,630.
The Ethereum blockchain is undergoing a shift from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake one, as part of the main Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. This will move the blockchain away from being reliant on miners to process transactions, instead allowing anyone who is willing to stake 32 ETH to process them instead — at the risk of losing their coins if they act maliciously.
According to the Beaconcha.in explorer, there are currently 152,000 validators (as opposed to miners) processing blocks on the proof-of-stake network. These validators have a roughly 99% success rate for blocks, with around 1% of blocks missed per day.
The deposit contract is where Ethereum users need to send their ether if they want to stake them on the network. The amount of ETH in the deposit contract represents the upper limit of the amount of funds that are being used for staking on the network.
Those staking ETH on the network can receive rewards of up to 23%. But there’s a catch; both the deposits and the rewards can only be withdrawn once phase 1.5 of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade goes live, which is scheduled for 2022.
UPDATE 1-Ethereum extends gains to rise 8%; bitcoin firms
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(Bloomberg) – Sign up for the New Economy Daily newsletter, follow us @economics and subscribe to our podcast.Turkey’s economy has grown at a strong pace this year, outperforming most large economies as it recovers from the pandemic – an expansion that’s come at the expense of price and currency stability.Turkey grew faster than all Group of 20 nations except for China in the first quarter after nearly stalling a year ago when Covid-19 struck. It’s been bolstered by robust consumption on the back of last year’s government-led push to cut interest rates and boost lending.Gross domestic product rose 7% from a year earlier and 1.7% from the fourth quarter. The median of 22 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey was for 6.3% growth compared to the same period in 2020.There is an “exchange rate illusion” in Turkey’s economic growth data, said Enver Erkan, chief economist at Istanbul-based Tera Yatirim. GDP per capita in U.S. dollar terms has dropped nearly 40% since 2013 to around $7,700 last year, making Turkey’s economic model unsustainable as the growth is mainly driven by government spending and efforts to boost lending, he said.The government encouraged banks to ramp up loans to help businesses and consumers ride out last year’s Covid-19 crisis. The credit boom was coupled with a front-loaded easing cycle. That growth push weakened the currency by 20% last year and kept headline inflation in double digits.The currency lost a further 10% against the dollar in the first quarter, particularly after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the central bank’s hawkish governor Naci Agbal in March. The decision to fire Agbal, who had sought to restore the central bank’s credibility, set off a swift reversal of investor enthusiasm, sending Turkish markets into a nosedive.Below are some more highlights from the GDP report released by the state statistics institute in Ankara on Monday:Household consumption – estimated to account for about two-thirds of the economy – continues to be one of the main drivers of growth. It jumped 7.4% from a year earlier.The biggest contribution to growth came from manufacturing sector, which rose 12.2% in the first quarter on an annual basis.The size of the economy grew to $728.5 billion in the first quarter from $717 billion in current prices last year.Exports rose 3.3% on an annual basis. Imports dropped 1.1%.Gross fixed capital formation, a measure of investment by businesses, rose an annual 11.4%. Government spending rose 1.3% after a 6.6% jump in the previous quarter.The economy grew by 1.7% in the last quarter from the previous three months when adjusted for seasonality and the number of working days. Overall output rose 1.8% in 2020.The data expose the challenge facing new central bank Governor Sahap Kavcioglu as he looks to restore price stability without cooling the economy ahead of the general elections in 2023.Kavcioglu pledged policy continuity after his appointment and kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 19% for a second meeting this month, saying the pace of price gains had peaked in April. Consumer inflation quickened for a seventh month to 17.14% in April.There may be a limited drop in the pace of growth in the second quarter, according to Istanbul-based economist Haluk Burumcekci. “Uncertainties regarding the monetary policy makes it difficult to assess the upside risks on our growth expectation of 5.5% for 2021,” he said.(Updates with chart and more details in the bullets)More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Ex-Head of China’s Digital Yuan Effort Says CBDCs Could Operate on Ethereum
The former head of the digital currency initiative at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are set to become more “smart” and could one day operate on blockchain networks like Ethereum.
Yao Qian, now director of the Science and Technology Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said over the weekend that CBDCs shouldn’t attempt to be just a digital form of physical cash, but should incorporate smart contract functionality, Sina Finance reported Monday.
Smart contracts are automatically executing pieces of blockchain code that carry out functions when certain conditions are met, and can also be designed to complement or replace legal contracts.
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Yao told the International Finance Forum 2021 Spring Conference in Beijing, however, that the number of security incidents arising from smart contract vulnerabilities shows the technology still needs to mature. Further, there are concerns over the legal status of digital contracts, he said.
As such, central banks should take a cautious approach, starting with simple smart contracts and building complexity as security and legality become more assured.
Yao led the central bank’s digital currency research lab from its inception until he left the PBoC in 2018, moving to the China Securities Regulatory Commission at the end of 2019. He is cited as author or co-author on many of the central bank’s patent applications relating to CBDC technology.
The People’s Bank has been working on trials of its digital yuan with commercial banks and payment providers. However, a CBDC needn’t necessarily be account-based, Yao said.
In theory, via a “two-tier” approach, a digital yuan or digital dollar could sit on Ethereum’s network, or that of the Facebook-backed Diem (formerly Libra). That would mean central banks could provide CBDCs directly to users without needing intermediaries.