200,000 Validators have joined Ethereum 2.0.

For the first time since its introduction on December 1st, 2020, Ethereum 2.0 has surpassed 200,000 validators. Since then, the Proof of Stake (PoS) network has run well, progressively gaining trust to the point where it now has 6,405,339 eth in its possession.

That's $13.5 billion in eth, which is now earning 6.1 percent a year as the network appears to be on its way to achieving the massive 10 million eth validators mark by the end of the year. That means around 6% of the overall supply is effectively out of circulation right now, and will be for at least another year. These 200,000 validators are best compared to asics since, just as one person can have many asics, one person can also have many validators (validators are 32eth slots). We'd need access to node data to gain any indication how many people/entities are staking, which is strangely not available for ethereum 2.0 right now.

However, because one person can operate multiple nodes with 32 slots and one entity can run one node with numerous validators, this would provide its own set of challenges. Many exchanges, notably Kraken and Bitcoin Suisse, offer staking services to end users, making guesstimates much more difficult until big data is used to acquire a more complete picture of addresses' links to nodes and validators.

Such information will most likely become available to all in due time, however for the time being, fundamental details such as how many nodes are running which client are absent in a comprehensive manner.

The achievement of this milestone also raises doubts about how many validators the network can handle, with Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, earlier stating that a limit of one million validators may be necessary.

We're still a long way from that number, but becoming a validator will become much more difficult than it is now. It's unclear what happens when that number is reached in terms of whether a potential validator must wait for others to leave or if it's done by rotation.

Years later, however, staking eth is becoming a reality, with the 6.4 million number only rising for the time being because withdrawals are not permitted until the unlock.

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