Along with the growth of the ether price above $2,800, the popularity of staking the coin has increased significantly. The amount of ETH staked on Beacon Chain has reached 30,234,354, which is 25% of the total coin supply.

Between February 1 and February 15, investors transferred more than 600,000 ETH to smart contracts for staking. There are currently 1,222,010 validators on the Beacon Chain network, of which 944,835 are active in block production. Considering that the current total amount of available ETH is 119.8 million, about 25% of the circulating volume of coins of the second cryptocurrency is blocked in staking.

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The increase in the number of blocked ETH and the increase in the number of validators makes the network of the second cryptocurrency more secure. For comparison, at the start of Beacon Chain, 21,063 addresses participated as validators. In addition, this reduces the amount of coins available on the free market, which benefits the price of ether.

At the beginning of the month, cryptocurrency analyst Michael van de Poppe predicted that ETH would reach $4,000 in the next six months.