According to U.Today, the Ethereum network has reached an important milestone, with the number of validators reaching 1 million. Ethereum developer Terence Tsao celebrated the milestone on social media. According to the screenshot, the number of active Ethereum validators has reached 1,000,012, while the total number of pending validators is 14,379.
This milestone comes with an impressive number, about 32 million Ethereum has been staked (32,000,026 ETH). This number represents about 26% of the total Ethereum supply, showing a fairly high level of participation in ETH staking. Validators are crucial to the Ethereum network, especially since the switch to the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in September 2022. They are responsible for storing data, processing transactions, and adding new blocks to the blockchain, a role previously undertaken by miners in the Proof of Work (PoW) model, thereby keeping Ethereum secure and earning new ETH in the process.
Reaching one million validators is more than just a statistic; it represents the amount of trust and resources that users are willing to invest in keeping the ETH network running. Currently, the Ethereum network is preparing for a new upgrade: Electra is the name of the consensus layer (CL) upgrade for the next hard fork planned on Ethereum. Deneb is the latest hard fork activated on Ethereum.
