Ethereum 2.0’s countdown has officially begun with the release of its deposit contract on November 4; this marked the beginning of the transition to ETH 2.

Developer Afri Schoeden committed the mainnet deposit contract address and minimum genesis time to GitHub around 15:00 UTC on November 4:

According to GitHub records, the eth2 deposit contract address is 0x00000000219ab540356cbb839cbe05303d7705fa, and the eth2 Beacon Chain genesis should be taking place in early December (the earliest it will happen is 12:00 UTC on 1 December 2020).

Here is core researcher Danny Ryan talking more about the genesis date/time in an Ethereum Foundation blog post:

To trigger genesis at this time, there must be at least 16384 32-ETH validator deposits 7 days prior to December 1. If not, genesis will be triggered 7 days after this threshold has been met (whenever that may be).

Users who stake a minimum of 32 ETH on the new network will begin receiving rewards at the onset of the genesis event, with the expected inflationary interest between eight and fifteen percent. 

However, it is worth highlighting the warning issued by Solidity developer Dean Eigenmann:

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