worldcoinindex.com
While the broader cryptocurrency market has entered into a strong consolidation, the world’s second largest crypto Ethereum (ETH) continues with its upward journey.
Earlier on Wednesday, April 5, the ETH price gained by nearly 6% moving all the way closer to $2,000. As of press time, ETH is trading at a price of $1,916 with a market cap of $230.7 billion.
Of course, the bulls will be targeting the psychological important level of $2,000 next. Interestingly, today’s ETH price gain sends a very bullish signal as it comes just a week before the much awaited Shapella upgrade schedule next week on April 12. As per the Ethereum Foundation, the Shapella upgrade combines changes to the execution layer (Shanghai), consensus layer (Capella) and the Engine API.
The execution layer is where all the smart contracts and protocols rule reside while the consensus layer is where all the network validators follow these rules.
This is for the first time since august 2022 that the ETH price has surged past $1,900 level. Of course, the Shapella upgrade is a major catalyst driving the ETH price higher and will implement Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4895.
The Shanghai hardfork holds significant importance to the Ethereum ecosystem as it will allow the validators and stakers to withdraw their stakedETH from the Beacon Chain. This will be in addition to other EIPs which will help in reducing transaction costs while increasing the transaction speeds.
Some market analysts have shared concerns over the Shanghai hardfork adding that it would it would majorly boost the ETH supply in the market thereby creating a selling pressure on Ethereum. However, some argue that several validators participated in ETH staking at a higher price and thus would not let go off their holdings in a loss.
Along with the staked ETH, the Shanghai hardfork will unlock he rewards accumulated by the stakers. As a result, validators get an option to just withdraw the rewards without touching their initial staked amount or they can withdraw the entire value i.e. staking + rewards.
On-chain data shows that over the last 7 months, there been strong acclamation by ETH whales. Addresses holding 100-10k ETH have accumulated $4.24B in the past 9 months.
On the upside, the next critical area of resistance for ETH is between $2,100 and $2,150. In this price range, nearly 200K addresses had previously purchased over 18M ETH.