After literally years in the making, the genesis block of the Ethereum ii.0 beacon chain has finally seen the light of mean solar day.

The repeatedly delayed scalability and security upgrade to the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap confidently took its kickoff breath equally planned, at just after 12 pm UTC on December. 1. The launch suffered no hiccups and immediately reached the required stake participation rate to finalize the blockchain.

Vitalik Buterin joked virtually how the get-go block did not include any meaningful messages "about some behemothic leaps for mankind or whatsoever."

The biggest change is the introduction of a proof-of-pale consensus to the network, which has previously been purely based on the same proof-of-work consensus every bit Bitcoin.

PoS aims to provide a more free energy-efficient method of securing the network past requiring validators to lock Ether (ETH) into a staking contract, rather than solve cryptographic puzzles using calculating ability.

The planned launch date was confirmed simply a week ago, as the seven-twenty-four hours countdown could but be initiated one time a total of 524,288 Ether had been deposited in the staking contract.

After a painfully tiresome start, the staking full was reached with only hours to spare in order to hit the anticipat target of Dec. 1.

The transition to PoS paves the way for futurity planned upgrades to be implemented, such as sharding to improve scalability.

Currently staked ETH are likely to be locked up until Phase 1.5 of the Ethereum 2.0 rollout, currently planned for late 2021 or early 2022. This will see the electric current Ethereum mainnet merge with the new beacon chain and sharding system.

Apprehension for the Eth2 launch has been edifice throughout 2020, and has been reflected in the toll of Ether, which started the twelvemonth at just $130 but is currently riding loftier at over $600.

The launch will be especially welcomed by those in the decentralized finance community. The explosion of DeFi during 2020 saw a huge increase in traffic and gas fees on the Ethereum network.