The Ethereum Beacon Chain upgrade is getting a lot of support from the cryptocurrency community.
Popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced plans to support Ethereum through its Ethereum 2.0 upgrade and staking. Ethereum scalability issues have skyrocketed in recent times. The current DeFi craze has further intensified these issues. Gas prices on Ethereum are at an all-time high, and the network is quite slow. The proposed update is expected to solve the Ethereum scalability issues.
The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is expected to take place in stages. The first phase of the upgrade (Beacon Chain) took place on December 1, 2020. This is as a result of the platform meeting its benchmark of staked tokens and validators a few hours before the deadline.
Coinbase has disclosed plans to support the ETH upgrade. Interested Coinbase users will be able to convert ETH to the recently launched ETH 2.0 tokens. They will also earn staking rewards on the platform.
The American exchange further confirmed this on Twitter.
On December 1, the Ethereum Beacon Chain will launch, beginning a multi-year upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2). Coinbase intends to fully support ETH2 through staking and trading.
Read more here: https://t.co/e1fsAohT4j
— Coinbase (@coinbase) November 30, 2020
Staked ETH 2.0 Token Still Locked
Coinbase also looks to facilitate interoperability between the recently launched Ethereum 2.0 and ETH mainnet. Users will be able to trade either token without any constraints. However, it is important to note that all staked Ethereum 2.0 tokens will remain inaccessible for a yet undisclosed period of time.
Coinbase plans to provide liquidity for ETH and its recently launched Beacon Chain as well as other cryptos on the American exchange.
According to the blog post, the official listing of ETH 2.0 token is expected to take place next year. Only jurisdictions where Coinbase is already operational will have access to trading.
About Ethereum
Following its official launch in 2015, Ethereum has been a well-known name in the crypto and blockchain space. It is allegedly the number one altcoin available today, second only to Bitcoin. The blockchain platform is well known for its major role in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. The platform serves as a base for the development of several smart contracts and dApps. Several top DeFi protocols available today were built on Ethereum. The 2020 surge in DeFi has been linked to the increase in Ethereum’s scalability issues. Hence, the need for the upgrade.
The upgrade will also result in a shift from Ethereum’s proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
ETH Price
At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $597.10, with a market cap of $67,892,504,897 and a 24-hour trading volume of $14,727,601,899.
Find out more about the Ethereum Beacon Chain launch on the Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel.