Despite epic price rises since the start of the year and the fact that it’s the second-biggest cryptocurrency by total market capitalization, Eth2 lags behind competitors in the staking rankings. So, why isn’t Ether (ETH) the number one staking cryptocurrency?
A brief history of proof-of-stake
Back in 2012, Peercoin developers Sunny King and Scott Nadal proposed a PoS proposal as part of a hybrid consensus model. In 2013, the Nxt genesis block hailed the first pure proof-of-stake blockchain, which Blackcoin rapidly followed in early 2014. At that time, crypto was still relatively niche, and consensus models, in general, were still not necessarily the contentious issue they would become in subsequent years.
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After Ethereum launched in 2015 and development activity rapidly gained momentum, many projects wanted to emulate its success. However, Ethereum’s scalability challenges — resulting from its dependence on proof-of-work — quickly became a known issue. Therefore, core development teams started examining other consensus models, attempting to put their