ConsenSys Ethereum 2.0 Staking Survey – 65% ETH Holders Plan To Stake

The leading blockchain development company ConsenSys released a detailed survey report on May 14th about ETH holder’s views regarding Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 staking mechanism and rewards, once it goes live at sometime during this year. It was slated to be launched at the end of Q2 2020, however Ethereum teams are indicating that it might possibly take some more time. The survey was conducted with 300 participants and the conclusions were posted on Twitter.

What Percentage Of The People Will Stake On Ethereum 2.0?

Out of 287 respondents, over 65% plan to stake and half of those plan to run their own validators node. The remaining plan to use third party staking services, in order to participate. Around 14.6% haven’t decided yet and a small number of people 2.8% don’t plan to stake.

The 65% of the participants who are willing to stake, whether by running their own node or by using third party services plan to put 50% of their total ETH holdings for this purpose. A high majority of people – a 63% figure from all survey participants own more than 32 ETH (the minimum required for staking). But, the majority of the people who indicated that they won’t stake have less than 32 ETH.

Staking Rewards Expectations – Ethereum 2.0

The motivation for running validator nodes and providing computational power / security to the network via staking is ETH rewards. The participant indicating that they would run their own nodes expect average 5.8% rewards. Those who would rely on third party services for staking expect average 7.6% rewards. The people who haven’t decided yet require 9.4% reward to convince them to stake.

Trust Factor, Knowledge About Eth2 Economics And Staking Services Pricing

The survey found that amongst all segments (validators, third party stakers and undecided), the trust factor is high for Binance, Coinbase and Prysmatic Labs, if they choose to offer staking services. Also, the people who plan to run their own validator nodes were also likely to self-report to have sound understanding about Ethereum 2.0 economics, than the people who would rely on third party services or those who haven’t decided yet.

The participants who indicated that they would run their own validator node are willing to pay 3.9%-11.7% of their earned rewards for staking services, the same fee percentages is 3.6%-9.4% for people who indicated that they would rather rely on third party services and around 2.8%-7.2% for people who are uncertain about whether to stake or not.

About Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum 2.0 is the next big upgrade for the Ethereum network. It will bring Proof Of Stake (POS), eWASM and sharding. It will reduce the resources, required to run the Ethereum network, as well as bring scalability and performance improvements. The price of ETH tokens is expected to gain a major boost also.

The upgrade will be implemented in three phases, with the first Phase 0 Beacon Chain, expected by the end of Q2 2020, which will introduce the staking facility. This will be followed by the Phase 1 in Q1 2021, which will introduce sharding and allow data to be stored on shards, however transactions can’t still be processed. The Phase 2 will make the Ethereum 2.0 truly complete and the network operational, after its introduction at some point in 2022. It will bring the Ethereum WebAssembly (eWASM) replacing the now operational Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Only after the Phase 2 has been rolled out, proper execution of smart contracts and transactions can commence on the new Eth2 chain. The Eth1 and Eth2 chain will gradually merge with each other.