Ethereum’s active deposits surged to a 34-week high. The spike levels last seen since Merge might act as a foreshadowing for increased volatility, according to data analytics platform Santiment.
9913 distinct deposit addresses for ETH were detected on exchanges, which was a record peak since September 15.
The rise in the metric, per Santiment, is a hint that ETH volatility may soon escalate, as it did after spikes during the Merge & FTX collapse.
Active deposits include transactions from deposit addresses to main exchange wallets and deposit addresses to personal wallets.
In a routine market, players typically appreciate a surge in the metric. Therefore, it cannot be a determining factor for price movement since it only indicates that people are currently starting to trade.
One thing is certain, though: much like during the FTX collapse and the Merge, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to see increased volatility. It would be preferable if market participants were cautious and ready for it.
At the time of this post, Ethereum managed to breeze past the psychological threshold of $1.9k and is up by nearly 3% in the past 24 hours.
Not only active deposits, but the ETH network has now become costlier, thanks to the latest meme coin mania that has gripped investors of late.
Earlier this week, the daily median gas price topped a 12-month high of 87 gwei [one gwei is a billionth of an ether].
Ethereum Gas Fee Tops 12-Month High
According to pseudonymous analyst @hildobby’s Ethereum Gas tracker on Dune Analytics, the transaction cost, jumped more than 50% since the launch of the PEPE token on April 18.
At one point, the one-minute median gas price surged well past 150 gwei.
Per analytics firm CoinMetrics, the increase is a sign of significant demand for the Ethereum network, particularly from traders of meme coins.
The PEPE fever has been so intense that the pepecoin-wrapped ether [PEPE-WETH] liquidity pools of prominent Ethereum-based decentralized exchange Uniswap recently overtook other liquidity pools in terms of activity.
Data that Scimitar Capital’s Alex tweeted revealed that PEPE traders were responsible for more than 410,000 Uniswap transactions, consuming roughly $10 million worth of gas.