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Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum [ETH] see a double-digit price drop as market bleeds red

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As the week came to a close, the entire cryptocurrency market faced the wrath of the bear. Most tokens witnessed their price supports take a hit with many investors seeing it as an opportunity to “buy the dip”. Up until last week, altcoins were performing better than Bitcoin but it looks like the world’s largest altcoin was doing a better job fending the bear now.

On Friday, Ethereum took a hit with a daily drop of over 7 percent. This red bleed leaked into the weekly rate as the loss percentage shot up to 17 percent. At the time of writing, ETH was trading for $2855.92 while holding a market cap of $336.84 billion. The latest bear crash took a massive chunk out of the daily trading volume, clocking in at $19.2 billion.

Ethereum’s crash was also accompanied by a lot of people moving into DeFi investments. New investments were still coming in from supporters and crypto organizations.

Ethereum 1 hour:

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Ethereum [ETH] see a double-digit price drop as market bleeds red 3

The largest altcoin had its work cut out as the last red candle shattered immediate price supports. After the day’s price crunch, the new support was formed at $2872.

Relative Strength Index: The RSI fell below the oversold threshold just as the bear broke Ethereum’s price support. Massive sell offs are a part of major price crunches as displayed in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Chaikin Money Flow: Ethereum’s CMF followed the RSI’s footsteps by crashing abruptly. The fall below the zero line signified that the capital leaving the market had overtaken the influx.

Parabolic SAR: All the markers for the day stayed above the price candles as the last candle dropped an entire level.

Ethereum 1 day:

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Ethereum [ETH] see a double-digit price drop as market bleeds red 4

In the long term, Ethereum’s recent crash paled in comparison to earlier drops. The support on the daily spectrum held near the $1700 mark, a marker created in July.

Chaikin Money Flow: Ethereum broke its bullish pattern by crashing below the zero line. Daily trading investments have decreased significantly since climbing to good heights in mid-August.

Parabolic SAR: The markers stayed above for the entirety of September with the latest crash contributing to the momentum shift. A price increase would enable the cryptocurrency to move into greener pastures.

Relative Strength Index: The sudden change in investor sentiment was on full show with the k-curve. The number of users selling their ETH tokens had surpassed the number of HODLers.

Ethereum [ETH] whale addresses skyrocket to 51-month peak

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Ethereum [ETH] has managed to reverse some losses after the flash crash of September 7. It was now up by almost 5% over the past day. The renewed interest in the crypto-asset can be attributed to the whales accumulating in the backdrop of a massive plunge.

As a matter of fact, the on-chain data provider Santiment observed that the ten largest ETH whale addresses have skyrocketed in supply held in the period of the last 15 weeks. Collectively, these addresses now hold more than 21% of the crypto-asset’s total circulating supply. With this, the amount of ETH stored in these cold wallets has increased to a 51-month all-time high.

Santiment’s tweet regarding the same read,

“Ethereum is charging back, making a modest rebound thus far to $3,537. The top 10 largest whale addresses have notably skyrocketed in supply held over the past 15 weeks, now owning 21.38% of all ETH, the largest amount by them in 51 months.”

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Bullish on Ethereum

Ethereum’s failure to advance and hold its fort above $4,000 may have drawn aggressive profit-booking from the short-term traders. But the latest accumulation trend depicted a positive picture for the altcoin that shed double-digit losses during the heightened sell-off earlier this week.

Many attempted to capitalize on the market-wide oversold bounce. With ETH’s rising dominance, investors are now betting on the largest altcoin as medium-term price movement does not look promising but rather bleak for Bitcoin.

Market participants aren’t the only ones who are bullish on Etheruem. Standard Chartered’s global research team compared the crypto-asset to a “financial market,” enabling lending, insurance, and exchanges and stated,

“In other words, while potential returns may be greater for ethereum than for bitcoin, risks are also higher,” said the bank’s team, adding “the current price reflects both the relative complexity of ethereum [versus bitcoin] and the uncertainty around ethereum’s development.”

The popular bank also expects Ethereum to profit from the 2.0 upgrade that started last year and is designed to enhance scalability, improve functionality make it more efficient.

Besides, Ethereum whales had reportedly moved over $1 billion in ETH across 21 separate transactions this week alone as the entire market severe correction. As revealed by the crypto tracker Whale Alert, an unknown wallet sent cryptocurrency exchange Binance a massive 99,990 ETH on September 7, which totalled more than $343 million, the largest of the tracked transactions.

Developer of ethereum layer 2 solution arbitrum secures $120M funds

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Offchain Labs, the developer of Ethereum scaling solution Arbitrum, has announced raising $120 million in a Series B funding round. It was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and also saw the participation of Polychain Capital, Ribbit Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Pantera Capital, among others.

Of late, the rollup network called Arbitrum One has garnered significant traction and has managed to build up notable support since it beta-launched to developers in May this year. Since then, approximately 400 teams have reportedly signed up for access.

Ethereum’s perennial inefficiencies and the rise of other scaling solutions

Besides, Ethereum’s scalability problems and network congestion have been topics of extensive debate and discussion. Enormous transaction times and fees have continued to burden developers despite the fact that markets surrounding the ecosystem have surged over the past year.

As a matter of fact, the core developers of the Ethereum ecosystem have attempted to solve these problems with upgrades to the protocol itself, in the short term, however, there seems to be no easy way out. Hence, it is only natural that the second layer solutions are being explored.

Needless to say, Arbitrum has emerged as a promising solution with the capability to handle more transactions than Ethereum at lower costs. It processes transactions on a sidechain that leverages optimistic rollups tech and then regularly conducts them to the main Ethereum blockchain in batches.

Arbitrum’s Mainnet beta

Until now, only developers could release and test their applications on Arbitrum’s platform. But the mainnet launch has now enabled the community members to interact with decentralized apps [DApps] on it. The official announcement read,

“We’ve committed to a fair launch, and today we’re delivering on that commitment by opening up to users for all projects simultaneously. But even though we’re removing the whitelist today, this doesn’t mean that every project will choose to go live immediately. The Arbitrum One Portal is the best place to track the progress of current and upcoming launches on Arbitrum.”

Arbitrum happens to be the first scaling solution by Offchain Labs, and the initiative is working on other solutions to scale Ethereum. Even as the release is a notable milestone, Arbitrum One is still in beta. The team behind the project asserted that they would be closely observing the rollout and “maintaining the ability to do fast upgrades and even pause the system should it become necessary.”

Ethereum Foundation receives $1.5M donation to fund Ethereum 2.0

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Ethereum Foundation has revealed that six crypto-companies have donated $250k each. According to the official announcement, the funds secured will be used to aid efforts to upgrade the Ethereum blockchain. Over the past several years, the ETH ecosystem has witnessed unprecedented developments and innovations.

To foster the growth of the blockchain, several platforms have come together and donated a total of $1.5 million. Announcing the same, Ethereum Foundation stated,

“Today, we’re excited to announce that Compound Grants, Kraken, Lido, Synthetix, The Graph and Uniswap Grants are donating $250K each to support ETH execution-layer client teams. This project is the result of several months of work, and will supplement the significant funding provided by the Ethereum Foundation this year. This fundraise will have no impact on the EFs continued financial support for these teams.”

Recipients of Ethereum Foundation’s fund

The official blog post also stated that the Ethereum Foundation has allocated more than $10 million on execution-layer client R&D since the beginning of 2019 and that it remains on its highest priority list.

The foundation reportedly picked five of its client teams- Besu, Erigon, Geth, Nethermind, and Nimbus to receive the funds. It will offer the necessary infrastructure for the network after the unification of ETH 1.0 and ETH 2.0. The non-profit organization asserted to the community that the additional grants will not influence its current financial support efforts.

Besides, TWJ had earlier reported Kraken’s contribution to the Ethereum Foundation to support the open-source developer teams behind ETH 2.0. In addition to the cryptocurrency exchange, the six entities include Uniswap, Synthetix, The Graph, Compound Grants Program, and lastly, Lido Finance.

Revealing the main intention behind this approach, the foundation said,

“Part of our goal with this first round is to lessen risks that come from reliance on any single team or entity as we all work to maintain quality open source products in a diverse, decentralized, and sustainable way. We continue to work towards more decentralized funding mechanisms for Ethereum’s public goods, and this is one more step that enables larger groups of participants to directly support client development and maintenance.”

Kraken gives $250,000 for Ethereum 2.0 development

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Leading cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced donating $250,000 to the Ethereum Foundation in a bid to support the open-source developer teams behind Ethereum 2.0. According to the official press release, the fund will be granted to developers working on nodes that maintain the network software over the following months. The exchange further mentioned that the funds would be directed to projects that drive over 80% of the distributed Ethereum network.

Kraken’s announcements come just a few weeks after Ethereum underwent a successful London hard fork which saw the blockchain network introduce five highly-awaited upgrades to its software.

Following the development, Kraken CEO and co-founder Jesse Powell stated,

“As the first major exchange to list ETH for trading, Kraken is proud once again to lead the way by giving back to the courageous builders who are hard at work on the front lines of crypto innovation.”

Kraken’s grants for Ethereum ecosystem’s development

The cryptocurrency exchange clients have reportedly staked more than 800,000 ETH, worth more than $2 billion, to secure the Beacon Chain, which happens to be the PoS version of the ETH blockchain. As a result, they have already made over 25,000 Ether in rewards via this offering by the end of July.

Besides, this is not the first time Kraken has been involved in the donation for the ETH ecosystem. As a matter of the fact, the crypto platform had previously given out grants to the decentralized ETH funding platform Gitcoin, which assisted Kraken to allocate $150,000 to the blockchain network’s infrastructure projects. Additionally, some of the other platforms to have received grants from the global exchange are Brink, BTCPay Server, and the University of Wyoming.

Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi lauded the “collaborative efforts” and stated,

“We strongly believe that collaborative efforts and support are the most sustainable way to benefit Ethereum in the long-term. This joint effort to support teams and builders that maintain a diverse set of Ethereum clients is not only impactful, but sets a great example.”

Ethereum [ETH] has little resistance until $3,390

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Ethereum [ETH] price surged to a whopping $3,000 for the first time in almost 80 days on the 7th of August. It wasn’t until the short-term sellers flipped the bullish narrative. But the weekend uptrend appears to have extended as the asset erased the subsequent losses and climbed back to $3,119, at the time of writing. The pullback was temporary and it was up by more than 20% over the past week.

According to the latest charts by the popular data analytic platform IntoTheBlock [ITB], the world’s largest altcoin has little resistance now that its price jumped above $3k. However, its next prominent hurdle stands tall at $3.39k. Its tweet regarding the same read,

“Ethereum [ETH] broke the $2,900 resistance and the IOMAP reveals that it has little resistance until $3,390. On the support side, around $2,860, over $800k $ETH were bought. Failing to hold on that level, there are two even larger levels of support until $2,6k.”

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Several industry leaders have remained optimistic about ETH’s overall long-term prospects. As a matter of fact, many others have claimed that the digital asset is likely to reach a new all-time high by the year-end and even rally to $10,000 or more in the next 12 months. The prediction though bold does not appear to be far-fetched as Ethereum has been on the best-performing assets in the last two quarters. Its fundamentals have never looked more bullish especially in the days leading up to Ethereum’s long-awaited London hard fork.

Significant rotation out of Bitcoin to Ethereum

Ethereum has been the talk of the town long before the hyped upgrade went live on the network thus paving the way for a huge transition. This can be evidenced in the latest report by the digital asset firm, Genesis which revealed that a significant rotation out of Bitcoin into Ethereum.

As institutional interest remained intact, the firm’s new loan originations surged by approximately 700% YoY and hit a new peak of $25 billion in the second quarter of 2021, and were 60% higher quarter-over-quarter. The report noted that the cumulative originated value to be at $66 billion which, in fact, marks the thirteenth consecutive quarter of growth.

While Bitcoin trading accounted for roughly 47% of Genesis’s overall spot trading activity, Ethereum pulled out most of that share from Bitcoin. According to the firm’s estimates, ETH accounted for nearly 25% of overall volumes on the desk. This had a ripple effect as other Ethereum-based DeFi protocols gained steam with the outperformance of ETH over BTC in the first half of Q2. Similarly, trading in UNI, SUSHI, AAVE also picked up.

Here’s what Ethereum [ETH] whales are upto

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There’s no stopping the Ethereum whales. As the crypto market went on a winning bullish streak, big Ether holders jumped on to get some action. Data provided by the on-chain analytics aggregator, Santiment, revealed that Ethereum whales have continued to accumulate the asset on the cheap.

As a matter of fact, the 10 largest ETH wallet owners are now in possession of more than 20% of the overall token offering. Over the past couple of months, Ethereum saw a dramatic plunge from its historic peak of $4,362 established on the 12th of May this year. During this phase, the whales had sold off coins

The accumulation by the top 10 ETH whales renewed after subsequent crashes and dips. The data shows that these entities have purchased another 2% of the ETH supply over the past two months. Besides, the overall accumulation trend of the whales in question has remained unfazed since May 2017.

The tweet regarding the same read,

“Ethereum’s top 10 non-exchange whales are adding on to their holdings, as their 21.3 million, ETH held this week established a new 5-year high. Meanwhile, top 10 exchange whales recently hit a low of 4.66M $ETH, the lowest since ETH’s 2015 inauguration.”

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The latest trend by the ETH whales demonstrated great confidence in the world’s largest altcoin in the world as it continued to rake in the digital asset at a magnificent pace.

Ethereum reserves take a hit

Another bullish sign that has led up to this week’s price surge was the exchange reserves of Ethereum that plunged to a new low in a one-year period. Crypto exchanges have shed more than five million ETH, down from a whopping 26 million by June 2020 to 21 million by June 2021.

Currently, ETH whales as well as investors have gone on an accumulation spree in anticipation of a price appreciation. The London hard fork is a crucial milestone that these entities are eyeing now. Hence, this number is like to decline more and more in the coming days.

Ethereum’s London hard fork pushed to Aug 4; dev expects further delay

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Ethereum’s long-anticipated hard fork has been pushed to the 4th of August. The news comes after ETH developer Tim Beiko proposed that the fork take place at block 12,965,000. The core developers will make a final decision on the proposal at their meeting beginning midnight on Saturday

The upgrade consists of five Ethereum Improvement Proposals [EIPs] that intend to revamp the gas fee structure, out of which the most EIPs are – 1559 and 3554. While the first one aims to implement a new fee structure to make the network less inflationary, the latter is for the purpose of delaying the difficulty bomb.

Notably, the London hard fork has been carried out into several testnets. Following the successful activation on the two testnets, Ropsten and Goerli, the final hard fork release date was announced. However, according to the Co-founder of ethhub.io, Anthony Sassano, the possibility of more delays could be in the cards. His tweet regarding the same read,

“The mainnet date/block number for London [EIP-1559] is expected to be discussed and possibly announced at this week’s Ethereum Core Devs meeting [July 9th at 14:00 UTC].”

While many have been looking forward to the upgrade since it is a crucial part of the Ethereum 2.0 release, there were many in the community who weren’t very please with the postponement. Prominent crypto Youtuber, Lark Davis, for one, stated,

“It may not actually be soon. lol. Ethereum man… Anyway, the core devs are meeting on the 9th to discuss the release. It was originally scheduled for the 14th. August 4th is now being floated. Could easily be pushed back months.”

Ethereum [ETH] Surges By 4%

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Ethereum's London hard fork pushed to Aug 4; dev expects further delay 11

London hard fork has been fueling investors’ appetite for the native crypto-asset, ETH. As a matter of fact, ETH had recently broken a 2-week high briefly before undergoing a mild retracement. Shortly after the latest development, it surged by 4% which pushed the token to $2,381, at the time of writing.

Is Ethereum’s [ETH] Sell-side Pressure Diminishing?

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Ethereum [ETH] has been beating the market on many fronts. The cryptocurrencies appeared to be recovering after the May setback. The investor sentiment was still in the bearish territory but there could be a reversal in this trend in the near term.

According to the recent on-chain analysis, the world’s largest altcoin’s sell-side pressure was found to be diminishing more and more which provided a window hope for Ethereum’s price movement.

What does Ethereum on-chain metrics depict?

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Is Ethereum's [ETH] Sell-side Pressure Diminishing? 14

After weeks of failed attempts to reclaim the psychological level of $3k, Ethereum might finally see a respite. This was according to the crypto intelligence platform, Santiment. The cryptocurrency saw a massive panic selling on the 28th of May spike, at the bottom.

This was when the investors went on to accrue significant profit when the price was near $2.6K. However, there has been a change in this trend. While exchange deposits still remain high when compared to the entire six months period, but less and less Ethereum was moving to these platforms. This demonstrated a sentiment of holding among the market participants.

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In addition, the ETH active addresses were also growing which was a sign of more activity in the coin market that could potentially catapult its price back to the recently established highs. In fact, Santiment also revealed that the figures were much stronger than Bitcoin.

“It’s not looking bad. At least from the perspective of social data and on-chain data. Rebounded quite viscerally in the last 10 days. Much stronger than Bitcoin. And it continues to grow, which is good for ETH.”

On the other hand, the fee on the Ethereum network was hovering close to its lowest ever level this year which was another good sign for the market. This can be attributed to the migration of many users to Polygon as well as fewer users were swapping stuff on mainnet.

While there are some encouraging signs in the short-term, the 36-day MVRV is yet to dip into negative at all. Meaning the profit-taking phase by the long-term holders is not yet over. On the flip side, upon gauging this bull cycle, the chances are fairly low, in fact, lowest since November 2020.

According to Santiment, a profit-taking phase could, at the very least facilitate more price appreciation, even compared to the previous rally.

Ethereum Dev Posts Clarification After Prysm Mainnet Block Proposal Failures

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Ethereum 2.0 core developer, Raul Jordon explained the reasons why the beacon chain started missing a lot of block proposals. He revealed that Prysm represented a large portion of Ethereum 2.0 operators and hence, naturally became the likely suspect.

This was the first major incident on Ethereum 2.0. So what exactly happened? Prysm validators failed to produce blocks for a period of 18 epochs on Friday, 23rd of April. The very next day, the validators reported the same issue again and again this time for 18 epochs. This issue prompted a reduction in validator participation.

Jordon admitted to being able to reproduce the error locally and said that the problem demonstrated an already known issue regarding ETH 1.0 data voting and validator deposits. This is the first time, that the issue had been reported to the team since it had never been widespread in any testnet nor in mainnet.

The bug was reportedly extremely tricky to diagnose, and it took the team of developers a period of 30 hours before getting to a root cause.

Impact on Ethereum 2.0

According to the developer, this event should not reduce the confidence in Ethereum 2.0. He explained that there was no consensus failure, and the impact and scope of the incident were small at the scale of the current 2.0 mainnet. Acknowledging the robustness of the ecosystem, Jordon stated,

“.. [ETH2.0].. with very high validator participation numbers since genesis, and has never skipped finality for any epoch. The ability for the network to go back to perfect operation after incident resolution instead increases confidence in the resilience of the blockchain, from our perspective.”

According to the post-mortem report, the total loss incurred from the incident is estimated to be roughly 25 ETH. All clients of the ecosystem were reportedly subjected to missed attestation penalties and the average per-validator loss was nearly 205K gwei [around $0.50 in the current market price of the crypto-asset].

In addition, the operational impact of the failure in block proposals is estimated to have surpassed 120 man-hours in the 30 hours between detection and resolution.