Tag: Validators

Ethereum Beacon Chain Sees Over $2 Billion Worth of ETH Withdrawn in Four Days

by Blockchain News

Ethereum’s Beacon Chain has been making headlines as over 1 million ETH worth $2.1 billion has been withdrawn from it in the first four days of the Shapella hard fork. This has resulted in Ether’s price rising above $2,100 for the first time in 11 months. According to data from beaconcha.in, the withdrawals have come from 473,7000 withdrawal requests, with Saturday, April 15, marking the largest withdrawal day at 392,800 ETH.

As of now, nearly 87% or 469,000 out of 540,000 active validators are able to withdraw their staked Ether. The Shapella hard fork has been a topic of debate within the Ethereum community as many were uncertain about its impact on ETH’s price. However, the first four days have produced close to a 10% rise, indicating that the hard fork has been beneficial for Ether’s price.

According to experts, much of the stake that has been withdrawn over the last few days is actually going straight back into the Beacon Chain as validators are looking to compound their interest. So much so that net stake is currently increasing. This means that the withdrawn stake is being reinvested in the Beacon Chain to earn interest on it, rather than being sold off in the market.

The current macroeconomic climate has also played a role in the withdrawals. Many early stakers wanted to liquidate their stake after waiting nearly 30 months for some. The withdrawals have allowed them to finally reap the benefits of their investments. The reinvestment of the withdrawn stake in the Beacon Chain also indicates that investors are confident in the platform’s future and are looking to earn long-term returns.

The Beacon Chain is an important component of Ethereum’s transition to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. It is currently running parallel to the existing Proof of Work (PoW) chain and will eventually replace it. The PoS algorithm is expected to reduce the energy consumption required for mining and increase the efficiency of the network. With the success of the Beacon Chain withdrawals, the transition to PoS is looking more promising than ever before.

In conclusion, the Beacon Chain’s recent success with over $2 billion worth of ETH withdrawn in just four days is a positive sign for Ethereum’s future. The reinvestment of the withdrawn stake in the platform is a strong indication of investor confidence in the long-term potential of the network. The transition to a PoS consensus algorithm is also looking more promising than ever before, and with the current macroeconomic climate, the future looks bright for Ethereum.

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Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade Complete

by Blockchain News

The Ethereum mainnet has completed its Shapella upgrade, allowing validators to finally withdraw their staked Ether on the Beacon chain. This successful execution is a significant step for Ethereum, as it enables validators to access their staked funds and provides an opportunity for ETH holders to move assets into Ethereum staking pools.

At the time of writing, a total of 126,955.07 ETH had been withdrawn by validators. Of the 559,549 active validators, about 44% of them, or 248,043 validators, have the ability to request a partial or full withdrawal. The majority of withdrawals currently vary between 2.8-3.2 ETH, indicating that most validators are only withdrawing their staking rewards.

The average price of staked ETH is $3,149, which could be a reason why validators are not withdrawing the whole amount. Additionally, the ETH price is currently trading just under $2,000, with the price acting as a key resistance. However, major crypto exchanges have announced their support for ETH unstaking, with several already processing withdrawal requests.

Coinbase, the world’s first publicly listed crypto exchange, has announced that ETH unstaking is now live on their platform. BitGo’s Chief Operating Officer Chen Fang also took to Twitter to announce that the exchange has successfully upgraded to Shapella, and ETH withdrawals are now live on the platform.

Kraken, on the other hand, began withdrawing validators for their United States customers on April 11th and began processing withdrawals of ETH after the completion of the Shapella upgrade. This early withdrawal of validators by the exchange was caused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission action brought against Kraken’s Ethereum staking product back in February.

Binance, the leading crypto exchange by trading volume, has announced its support for the Shapella upgrade and will begin processing withdrawal requests starting from April 19th. The exchange has also added that the withdrawal request can take up to 15 days to process due to processing limitations.

Bitfinex, one of the leading crypto exchanges, congratulated the Ethereum community on the successful upgrade and announced that the ETH withdrawal details would be shared soon.

This unlocking event may create conditions for an exodus from the staking protocol, but the ability to freely stake and unstake in accordance with bonding periods specified by the protocol could equally attract many ETH holders. The move to unstaking could see a massive movement of assets into Ethereum staking pools.

Overall, the successful completion of the Shapella upgrade is a significant milestone for Ethereum, as it provides validators and ETH holders the opportunity to access their staked funds and move assets into Ethereum staking pools. With major exchanges supporting ETH unstaking and processing withdrawal requests, it will be interesting to see how many ETH holders take advantage of this opportunity in the coming days and weeks.

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Orbs Releases Smart Contract for Validators in TON Blockchain

by Blockchain News

Orbs, a public blockchain infrastructure designed for mass usage applications, has announced the release of a new smart contract called the single nominator for validators in the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain. The contract provides an isolated cold wallet for validators to secure their validation process, enhancing their independence, security, and protection against gas-spending attacks.

In the TON blockchain network, validators participate in a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm by staking their cryptocurrency holdings to support the network’s security and transaction processing. The nominator essentially nominates a validator to represent their stake in the network and earn rewards on their behalf. The validator, in turn, is responsible for validating transactions and adding new blocks to the blockchain.

The single nominator smart contract provides an option for the core team’s nominator pool smart contract. The alternative was developed in-house to provide security for validators who stake their funds. The contract provides an isolated cold wallet for validators to secure their validation process and prevent gas-spending attacks. The contract also offers the ability to recover stakes during emergencies, such as elector upgrades.

The contract has been audited by CertiK, a Web3, blockchain, and smart contract security firm, which recently announced a partnership with TON to audit future projects on the network. Orbs has released the single nominator contract to the community as a free, open-source product.

The release of the single nominator smart contract is a significant development for validators in the TON blockchain network. The contract offers a secure and independent way for validators to participate in the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm, providing enhanced security and protection against gas-spending attacks. The contract’s auditing by CertiK adds an extra layer of security and confidence in the product’s reliability.

Orbs is a leading public blockchain infrastructure designed for mass usage applications. The platform aims to provide a scalable, secure, and decentralized infrastructure for developers to build their blockchain applications. Orbs is committed to advancing the adoption of blockchain technology by providing a user-friendly and developer-friendly platform for building decentralized applications.

In conclusion, the release of the single nominator smart contract by Orbs is a significant development for validators in the TON blockchain network. The contract offers enhanced security and protection against gas-spending attacks, allowing validators to participate in the proof-of-stake consensus algorithm in a secure and independent way. Orbs’ commitment to advancing the adoption of blockchain technology is demonstrated through the release of this free, open-source product, which is audited by CertiK, adding an extra layer of security and reliability to the contract.

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Binance Coin Dubbed “Winner Of 2021” By Crypto Research Firm

by NEWSBTC

It’s official, this was Binance Coin’s year. There are no two ways about it, BNB crushed it throughout 2021 and cemented itself as the third more popular coin in the world by market capitalization. Not a small feat, considering the phenomenal year that altcoins had. Several coins had their moment in the sun, capturing capital, headlines, and attention. No one got near Binance Coin, though.

Binance Coin performance 2021

Binance Coin's stellar performance | Source: The Weekly Update

According to Arcane Research’s The Weekly Update:

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“Bitcoin may have beaten the stock market in 2021, but it has been left in the dust by other cryptocurrencies. Binance Coin (BNB) is the best performer of the three biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, with a 1344% gain. The Binance Smart Chain ecosystem has seen massive growth in 2021, taking some market share from Ethereum.”

That’s why they dubbed Binance Coin as “the winner of 2021,” and their point is well taken. However, there’s more to the story. Binance as a company was in hot water for a while there. And their own validators blasted the Binance Smart Chain, saying things like, “There doesn’t appear to be any reasonable testing process in place. Every update appears to make things worse.”

Let’s explore the Binance Coin ecosystem’s tumultuous year.

Big Projects Decided To Operate On The Binance Smart Chain

There’s no denying it. As The Weekly Update says, “Ethereum has lost its indisputable position as the “one and only” smart contract platform.” And Binance has a lot to do with that. A controversial project from the start, the Binance Smart Chain has been dubbed a centralized Ethereum clone. And they have a point. However, even though the Binance team did fork Ethereum’s code, they were always upfront with the direction of the project. 

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In BSC’s documentation, the team shamelessly claims that the “Binance Smart Chain uses a consensus model called Proof of Staked Authority (PoSA). (…) This consensus model can support a short block time and low fees, and it only requires 21 validators to run.” Contrast that with the 11.000 nodes that reportedly support the Ethereum ecosystem.  

Also, their plan worked and projects flocked to it:

“Binance Smart Chain was developed explicitly to solve Ethereum’s rising gas fees and offers faster, scalable, and cheaper transactions. In the past, several alternative blockchains have tried to become ‘Ethereum Killers’ but couldn’t succeed in capturing new project’s interest. However, Binance Smart Chain is hosting numerous blockchain, Defi, and crypto projects.”

Problems And Connection To The Binance Coin

However, as in Ethereum’s case, success came with scalability problems. A set of validators took to GitHub to raise concerns about the state of the network and how running a complete node’s cost has increased tremendously.  “There is no code review, patches are simply committed, in most cases even without a proper description of what they do or what problem they try to solve,” the original poster said. 

“I’ve rarely seen something handled so unprofessionally,” the OP accused. “I have many full nodes running there and now all of them are unable to sync. Each of these servers costs me $800 per month (previously only $200), then you told me that I need faster bandwidth and disk which means the cost will keep rising,” a commenter claimed. 

What does this have to do with the Binance Coin? Everything. As the native currency of the Binance ecosystem, BNB’s success is tied to the success of the whole network. Binance is still doing amazing, but, can Binance Coin holders count on that to be the case in 2022?

BNBUSD price chart for 12/29/2021 - TradingView

BNB price chart for 12/29/2021 on Binance US | Source: BNB/USD on TradingView.com

Make No Mistake, Binance Coin Won 2021

It was an action-packed year, but Binance Coin rose to the test. Besides the validators uprising, the Binance team took care of these flash loan hacks and kept BNB’s price rising throughout the year. When CZ himself called for other entrepreneurs to create their own coins, NewsBTC was the voice of reason:

“Binance is not only the biggest exchange in the world; it also has the most activities, features, things to do. BNB powers all of that. How many coins support that huge of an ecosystem? How many coins have that many use cases? And yes, BNB provides its user with superpowers while in the Binance ecosystem and helps them save money. How many other coins can do something similar?”

Let’s not kid ourselves, the Binance Coin AKA BNB is a unicorn. A one-of-a-kind project that did many things right and rewarded the early believers with a phenomenal year. A 1344% increase in price is not something we see every day. Congratulations to Binance Coin for owning 2021.

Featured Image: Foundry on Pixabay | Charts by TradingView & The Weekly Update

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Ethereum’s Crowd Sentiment Hits a Two-Month High as ETH 2.0 Surpasses 200,000 Validators

by Blockchain News

Ethereum recently jumped above the $2,400 level, triggering crowd sentiment on Twitter to hit a two-month high, as acknowledged by Santiment.

The on-chain metrics provider explained:

“Ethereum is showing its most positive sentiment right now since mid-May.”

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The crypto market experienced a significant upward momentum after Amazon Inc hinted that it would allow its users to pay for products using cryptocurrencies before the company denied it. 

This price surge made nearly 2 million ETH addresses return to profitability. Data analytic firm IntoTheBlock stated:

“As ETH surpassed the $2,300 mark again, the Historical In/Out of the Money indicates that roughly 2 million addresses are back ‘in the Money’ since yesterday. At the current price, 94.14% of the addresses (52.36m) currently holding ETH are in a state of profit.”

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Ethereum 2.0 validators top 200,000

According to crypto insight provider Bloqport, ETH 2.0 surpassed 200,000 validators as more investments continue trickling into this deposit contract.

 

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As a result, 5.5% of Ethereum supply is locked in ETH 2.0.

Ethereum 2.0, also known as the Beacon Chain, was launched in December 2020 and was regarded as a game-changer that seeks to transit the current proof-of-work (POW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (POS) framework.

The ETH 2.0 upgrade is expected to slash daily emissions in the Ethereum network by 90%, from 12,800 to 1,280. Moreover, yearly inflation is likely to drop from 4.3% to 0.43%. 

Based on this upgrade, Ethereum is also anticipated to undergo Triple Halving, which is a highly significant economic event for the asset’s price in the coming years. 

Meanwhile, ETH has been leaving exchanges in droves. This is bullish based on market forces that price increases whenever supply drops and demand rises. 

With a supply squeeze expected in the Ethereum market, whether this will trigger a price surge remains to be seen. 

Image source: Shutterstock

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Stellar Network Faces Outage Following Offline Validators, Coinbase to Investigate

by Btcmanager

After a 2019 network freeze, the Stellar network has been hit by yet another crisis. According to data that has been made publicly available, it was unable to process transactions for hours.

XLM Price is Plummeting 

Stellar’s official update shows that some critical validators have been dropped out of the network by an unexplained technical failure.  As of 13:26 UTC, engineers from the Stellar Development Fund(SDF) examined the technical problems that led to the validators dropping off. The blockchain cannot also process new blocks since validators are currently offline.

Currently, the update given by the network has confirmed that they don’t know when they will fix the issue, for the transaction system to go back to normal. Users noted the last transaction took place over 10 hours ago. 

In the meantime, Bitstamp cryptocurrency exchange has temporarily stopped XLM, the native token of Stellar, deposits and withdrawals due to continuing issues. The token price has dropped from $0.57 to around $0.49 ever since the news.

As we have already established, the ongoing incident is not unprecedented for Stellar. In 2019, the network froze abruptly, and for two hours, transactions became difficult to verify. Though nodes of the Stellar Development Foundation were not responsible for the downtime, it exposed the Stellar blockchain network’s fragility. In Bitcoin or other PoW blockchains, such downtime would be unthinkable.

Current syncs among validators to keep a network running depend on complex encryption and Stellar is nothing different. Small software bugs, however, can cause intermittent disturbances.

An additional example is the Solana blockchain, which in December 2020 was similarly confronted by a 6-hour shutdown.

Coinbase to Investigate the Issue

As the bug is being fixed, Coinbase has confirmed that they are looking into the matter. In March 2019, Stellar (XLM) was listed on the Coinbase exchange network. 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Coinbase on a Nasdaq list last week, representing a tacit regulatory acceptance of trading on its website cryptocurrencies. The move is a win for digital currency advocates. 

Instead of an initial public offer, the San Francisco-based firm plans to start trading by 14 April. After the IPO was repressed in March, the firm implemented the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

In its last week of Nasdaq trade in the private sector, Coinbase was estimated at around $90 billion. A direct listing will make the company available to the public. 

Amid regulatory uncertainties, Coinbase last week announced that it was setting up an Indian office after rumors of an Indian administration preparing to ban cryptos.

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Valid Points: Price Dips, 60K Validators and Eth 2.0’s ‘Graffiti’ Messages

by Coindesk

It’s been a rough start to the week for crypto investors, although numbers are starting to point upwards once again.

Eyes were anxiously set on a new all-time high for ether that failed to materialize as Bitcoin miners largely pulled the price rug last weekend out from under the entire crypto market.

Let us not despair too much, however. There’s much to be discussed in the world of Ethereum 2.0. This week, we’ll look at some network stats that continue to show healthy growth among multiple key metrics such as active validators and slashing events. After that, we’ll look at the role of graffiti messages – the secret notes you can sign to on-chain messages.

Pulse check

Source: Beaconcha.in, Dune Analytics and Staking Rewards (Data as of 1/12/2021 @ 19:20 UTC)


Ethereum investors are still picking their teeth up from the floor after a 30% drop in the price of the cryptocurrency over the weekend from a high of $1,334 to $926, according to the CoinDesk 20.


And while red became the unofficial color of many decentralized finance (DeFi) users, Eth 2.0 stakers kept reeling in that sweet, sweet ether. Indeed, Eth 2.0 spits out steady rewards regardless of market conditions, and funds are locked for at least a year or more. So what’s there to worry about in the short run, right?

Looking at the network, the total amount of ether staked increased on the network roughly 5% since Jan. 5, although the total value locked on the contract dropped by about $2 million as the price of ether tumbled.


The Beacon Chain is also showing some 98% network participation, meaning the network is humming along just fine. There are almost 60,0000 active validators on Eth 2.0 as well, according to Beaconcha.in.

Finally, Eth 2.0 almost went a full week without a slashing event. Unfortunately, validator 57976 failed to attest a vote correctly and was subsequently slashed and exited from the validator pool. That event joins 35 other slashing events to date, according to Beaconcha.in. 

New frontiers

The launch of a new blockchain is a historic event. To mark the occasion, a little note is often included in the chain’s Genesis block; for example, Bitcoin’s first block included The Times headline below:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for bank

A note also accompanied the launch of Ethereum 2.0 on Dec. 1. But it ended up being a smidge less dramatic than Satoshi Nakamoto’s call to arms against central banks: “Mr. F was here,” the block’s graffiti reads. 

As Trustnodes reported, Mr. F is a decentralized application (dapp) developer who happened to be at the right place at the right time. No, it doesn’t have any significance. Yet, it does fit Ethereum community’s quirky nature pretty well, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin pointed out.


You may be wondering what “graffiti” is in the first place – at least, what it is in the context of blockchains. The Eth 2.0 spec describes graffiti as essentially arbitrary data with “no protocol level significance.” Graffiti is signed on the block level versus other arbitrary data inclusion points on the transaction level.

To date, graffiti has mainly been used by staking firms to identify the blocks they’ve validated. A few corny jokes have also been inserted here or there such as “why hodl when you can stake -P.”



Arbitrary on-chain data

There are a few ways to include data such as signed messages into the Eth 1.x blockchain, Teku project owner at ConsenSys Ben Edgington told CoinDesk in a direct message. 

The extra data field is perhaps the best corollary to the graffiti field as both occur on the block level and allows for inputting a limited amount of arbitrary info, he said.


(You can also upload information in a separate function, Ethereum’s data field, similarly to Bitcoin’s op_return function. These functions operate on a transaction level rather than the  block level, Edgington said. Eth 2.0 can’t yet send transactions so this function does not exist).

Storing random arbitrary data is easier on Ethereum than on Bitcoin, Edgington said. 

Indeed, Buterin and most Ethereum developers have never been too concerned with so-called “bloating” the blockchain with data, compared to Bitcoin developers, as CoinDesk reported in 2014 during the thick of the op_return conflict. Data can be stored on-chain as long as it pays the necessary fee to do so. 

“The ability for the miner to put a small amount of arbitrary data into a block has always been a feature of Ethereum, and uncontroversial. It’s usually used for input data to smart contracts, but doesn’t have to be,” Edgington said.

Validated takes

  • Bitcoin Goes Institutional, Ethereum Spreads Its Wings: CoinDesk Q4 2020 Review (Research, CoinDesk)

  • Scaling Solution Hermez Network Adds Tether Token to Tackle High Ethereum Fees (Article, CoinDesk)

  • Ethereum at $1000, redux (Blog post, Evan van Ness)

  • DeFi Top 20 with Arthur0x, Su Zhu and Hasu – Part Two (Podcast, Uncommon Core)

  • Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets (Blog post, Vitalik Buterin)

  • An Incomplete Guide to Rollups (Blog post, Vitalik Buterin)

Factoid of the week



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We’ll soon be incorporating data directly from CoinDesk’s own Eth 2.0 validator node in our weekly analysis. All profits made from this staking venture will be donated to a charity of our choosing once transfers are enabled on the network. For a full overview of the project, check out our announcement post.



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