Leading Ethereum developer firm ConsenSys has refuted speculation that it is running out of cash and isn’t formally raising money. The spokesperson even went on to say that ConsenSys had been buying up its own “significantly undervalued” shares on the secondary market.
According to many people with knowledge of the situation, the company that created the Ethereum wallet Metamask recently spoke with prospective investors, which could have resulted in negotiations about a potential injection of capital.
This week, ConsenSys unveiled Linea, its layer-2 network, on the main Ethereum network. The introduction of Linea reflects zkEVM solutions’ burgeoning popularity in the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem. The testnet portion of the new service was a success, with more than 46 million transactions being completed by 5.5 million different wallets.
As for the world’s No. 2 crypto, Ethereum has tapped the $2k mark for the first time since May, rising in tandem with the broader cryptocurrency market. The surge coincided with the landmark ruling where U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres declared that XRP is a security when sold to institutional investors but not to the general public.
Many saw the verdict as a win for the cryptocurrency industry over the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had sued Ripple in 2020. For more than two months prior to the XRP decision, ETH had difficulty breaking through the important $2k barrier. The new XRP judgment, however, raises the likelihood that Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies may soon be considered similar to XRP.
Amid the newfound market resurgence, Ethereum also turned deflationary this year. Data from ultrasound.money indicated that ether’s net issuance, or the annualized inflation rate, has decreased to -0.07%, indicating that more ether is being burned than is being created.
ConsenSys CEO Says Ethereum Deflation Is Crucial
The spike in ether burned was attributed by Marcus Sotiriou, market analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock, to a rise in non-fungible token [NFT] transactions fueled by optimism about the overall crypto market.
“There’s money that you spend to buy a coffee. There’s money that you invest. There’s money you can lend or borrow. You want sort of your high economic bandwidth money, like ether, to be very fresh and to appreciate in value,” ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin remarked.