The deposit contract for the ETH 2.0 upgrade went live on the mainnet on Nov. 4, as announced by the Ethereum Foundation.

• The deposit contract is the first step of the migration towards Ethereum 2.0, which will operate on a Proof-of-Stake mechanism as opposed to the current Proof-of-Work
• This contract allows users to begin staking Ether (ETH); to start the genesis block, ETH 2.0 requires 16384 validators to deposit at least 524,288 ETH in total a week before December 1, the expected launch date
• If the threshold is not met by December 1, genesis will be triggered a week after whenever the threshold is met; however, the launch is all but guaranteed to occur on December 1,
• 16,293 of the total ETH required has already been sent to the address, amounting to $6.57 million
• Following genesis, stakers will be able to earn comparatively high annual rewards of 8-15% on their staked value
• The launch of the contract and the impending mainnet release of the Beacon chain, ETH 2.0’s blockchain, is the culmination of multiple tests that have occurred in 2020
• The Zinken testnet launched successfully in October 2020, putting together the final touches for ETH 2.0