On Monday (December 7), with Ether (ETH) consolidating around the $600 level, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin seems to be celebrating the fact that 1% of the total supply of ether, i.e. one million ETH, has been locked in Eth2’s deposit contract.

According to data by CryptoCompare, as of 12:55 UTC on December 7, ETH is trading around $596.97, up 1.43% vs USD in the past 24-hour period.

Vitalik says that the dencentralization stats for Eth2 validators is “far better” than he expected.

Anthony Sassano, who is the product marketing manager at Set Labs, co-founder of ETH Hub, co-host of the “Into the Ether” podcast, and founder of the “Daily Gwei” newsletter, said earlier today (in issue #133 of his newsletter) that the Ethereum network “has never been more decentralized.”

Sassano says, that according to Ethernodes, there are currently over 11,000 Ethereum full nodes (as of 13:15 UTC, 11,230 full nodes to be exact).

He goes on to say ” the more nodes there are and the more distributed they are,” the harder is is for the Ethereum network to be shut down:

“I’m pretty sure that ~11,200 full nodes is the highest in Ethereum’s history (and it’s even higher than Bitcoin’s full node count). This is awesome to see and I hope that it lasts for as long as it can – the more distributed the Ethereum network is, the better”

Blockchain consultant Alexander Fisher, who organizes the Michigan Ethereum Meetup, says that the participation rate forEth2 validators is “hovering around 98-99% consistently.”

Last week, Michael Sonnenshein, managing director at Grayscale Investments LLC, said in a phone interview with Bloomberg:

“Over the course of 2020 we are seeing a new group of investors who are Ethereum first and in some cases Ethereum only. There’s a growing conviction around Ethereum as an asset class…

“The development of the asset class has continued to solidify itself. Ethereum has along the same lines of the staying power Bitcoin has.”

In the year-to-date period, Ether is up 362.5% vs USD.

Featured Image by “elifxlite” via Pixabay.com

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.