Kategorie: Ethereum News

Ethereum news about the ETH blockchain and its crypto ecosystem.

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Optimism price: OP surges 30% to hit new all-time high

  • OP has rallied over 30% in the past 24 hours, reaching a new all-time high of $2.97 on Coinbase
  • Optimism is outperforming major coins even as cryptocurrencies rally on Thursday.
  • Gains for Optimism comes amid buying pressure after news of an upgrade proposal planned for activation on 15 March.

Optimism is rallying again as excitement around the Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution increased following a major news announcement.

As shown on the 4-hour chart below, OP reached a new all-time high of $2.97 on Coinbase. As of 11:20 am ET on 2 February, the platform’s native token OP was trading at $2.91, still up by more than 32% in the past 24 hours.

Chart showing Optimism price rally to new all-time high on Coinbase. Source: TradingView.According to data from CoinGecko, the OP token price is up 205% in the past 30 days, outshing major coins. About 75% of the gains have come in the past two weeks as platform’s market capitalization steadily rose to currently stand around $625 million.

Why OP token price is surging

Optimism’s gains in the past few hours have come as buying pressure ramped up ahead of what promises to be groundbreaking network upgrade.

On Wednesday, the Optimism Foundation released a proposal seeking to deploy an upgrade to the protocol’s mainnet. According to the proposal, the upgrade targets improving network performance via the Optimism Collective: Bedrock.

It is the first major upgrade to the Optimism protocol and brings a rollups architecture to the protocol, with  transaction batching one of the main features highlighting the huge impact the upgrade could have for the blockchain’s performance.

“This upgrade offers a new level of modularity, simplicity, and Ethereum equivalence for Layer 2 solutions, providing unprecedented performance and functionality,” the Optimism Foundation wrote.

Improvements set to be added via the Bedrock release include reduced transaction fees, high throughput and improved sync speeds.

According to the team, the upgrade will not impact most users as the Optimism mainnet is “already EVM-equivalent.” However, some users including those running full and archive nodes have to take action in preparation for the upgrade.

The Bedrock proposal is expected to go through a two-week voting period, with deployment to the mainnet scheduled for 15 March if it passes.

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Ethereum price after Zhejiang testnet launch

  • The Ethereum Zhejiang public testnet went live on February 1, just according to the plan.
  • The testnet paves the way for the Shanghai and Capella upgrade testnet.
  • Ethereum price has responded positively to the launch by maintaining a positive sentiment.

At press time, Ethereum (ETH) price was $1,672.19, up 5.80% in the past 24 hours a day after the launch of the Zhenjiang public testnet.

While the testnet may not have much of an impact on the price of ETH since it has been on an upward trend since the start of 2023, it is important to acknowledge that if the launch went south, the price would definitely have been negatively affected.

What next for Ethereum?

The Zhenjiang public testnet is designed to allow Ethereum users to test and evaluate the process of withdrawing the staked ETH tokens and also test the network functionality after the Shanghai upgrade. Users can test validator deposits, familiarize themselves with how to change BLS, and evaluate the user interface navigation without risks.

That said, the testnet is a great pointer for the upcoming upgrades and sets the stage for Ethereum to go ahead with the next upgrades.

It is important to also acknowledge that The Zhenjiang testnet is the first release for the Ethereum development team since the highly successful Merge upgrade that made Ethereum a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.

Staked ETH

Currently, about 16.3 million Ether tokens have been locked on the Beacon Chain (Ethereum PoS chain). This represents about 13.5% of the total ETH circulating supply.

At the current market price, the staked ETH tokens are valued at about $27.257 billion. Unlocking these tokens will be a huge boost to the Ethereum ecosystem and investors will now not have to worry about when their staked ETH and interest will be available for use.

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Ethereum to launch “Zhejiang” public withdrawal testnet on Feb. 1

  • The “Zhejiang” public withdrawal testnet will then be followed by the Shanghai testnet.
  • This is the first major upgrade since the Merge upgrade.
  • The “Zhejiang” allows tools to test how to collect and display ETH withdrawal information.

Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi has confirmed via a Twitter post that the “Zhejiang” public testnet will be going live tomorrow (February 1, 15:00 UTC, 2023). The “Zhejiang” testnet will then be followed by the much-awaited Shanghai and Capella testnets.

Both the Shanghai and Capella testnets are scheduled to be triggered at epoch 1350.

Jayanthi was replying to another post by one, Barnabas Busa, who besides saying the testnet will go live tomorrow, said:

“Shanghai+Capella will be triggered 6 days later (at epoch 1350). You will be able to deposit validators, practice BLS change and exit without risk.”

In follow-up tweets, Jayanthi said:

“This is also a great opportunity for all tools to test out how they want to collect, display and use the withdrawal information. You can attempt to convert 0x00 credentials to 0x01 and set a withdrawal address. You can test partial withdrawals and full withdrawals by exiting your validator.”

Shanghai upgrade

The Shanghai and Capella upgrade testnets are expected to go live six days after the “Zhejiang” testnet, which will also feature all Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs) like timestamp-based forking that will come with the Shanghai upgrade.

The Shanghai upgrade is designed to allow ETH users to withdraw their Ether tokens plus rewards. Ether holders have been able to stake ETH since the Merge upgrade that moved the Ethereum blockchain from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain. However, the staked funds remain locked, pending a new upgrade the Shanghai.

Ethereum Foundation is targeting March 2023 for the Shanghai upgrade. After the Shanghai upgrade, Ethereum developers will turn their eyes to the EIP-4844 upgrade which is scheduled for May or June this year.

The EIP-4844 upgrade aims at increasing the scalability of layer-2 rollups on Ethereum by more than 100 times and also lower transaction fees.

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Oracle platform Pyth Network expands features to Arbitrum

  • Pyth Network’s price feeds are now available on Arbitrum.
  • Builders within the Ethereum scaling solution’s ecosystem can now tap into over 200 price feeds across crypto, equities and commodities.
  • The Pyth technology is already powering CAP Finance and Perpy Finance on Arbitrum.

Pyth Network, an oracle solution provider that’s mainly integrated across the Solana ecosystem, has announced expansion onto layer-2 blockchain protocol Arbitrum.

What this means is that the Pyth price feeds are now live on Arbitrum, a scaling solution developedby OffChain Labs for the Ethereum ecosystem. The Pyth team noted in a blog release on Tuesday that integration will support the decentralised finance (DeFi) community on Arbitrum.

Pyth to power Arbitrum dApps

Arbitrum already integrates with Chainlink price feeds. Basically, developers and other Arbitrum users now also have access a new oracle network with over 200 price feeds, covering major data needs across cryptocurrency, equities, FX pairs and commodities.

Mike Cahill, the Director of the Pyth Data Association, said that the integration with Arbitrum is significant. One of the reasons, he noted in a statement, is down to the fact that Pyth’s technology now powers decentralised applications (dApps) in the Ethereum ecosystem – the most prominent smart contracts blockchains today.

 “We’re excited to continue our expansion in the Ethereum world, and specifically the Arbitrum ecosystem as we continue to equip developers with high-quality data and enable a wide range of new dApps that are powered by Pyth,” Cahill added.

By bringing off-chain data in real time onto Arbitrum, Pyth is helping unlock previously inaccessible financial data for developers in this ecosystem.

As announced on Tuesday, Pyth’s price feeds already power Arbitrum-based perpetual DEX platform CAP Finance and decentralised copy trading protocol Perpy Finance.

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Institutional investors are increasingly bullish on Ethereum: report

  • 60% of respondents are convinced Ethereum will a better investment in 2023. 
  • Bitcoin is also seen as one with huge potential, while other coins attracting institutional investors are Polkadot, Cardano and XRP.
  • Speculative interest and exposure to distributed ledger technology are main reasons for increased interest.

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with its market worth nearly $190 billion. 

While it remains behind Bitcoin, whose market cap as of 27 January 2023 stood at over $482 billion, institutional investors are reportedly more bullish on the cryptocurrency’s prospects in 2023 than was the case going into the third quarter last year.

60% of institutional investors are bullish on Ethereum

According to the latest survey results published by digital assets manager CoinShares, bullish sentiment around the top altcoin by institutional investors has increased by 20% since the last survey in October 2022.

The asset manager’s report states that 60% of respondents from major wealth majors, family offices, hedge funds and financial advisors, believe Ethereum has a better growth outlook in 2023. In October, when CoinShares published its previous Digital Asset Quarterly Fund Manager Survey, 40% of respondents had indicated a bullish outlook for the leading smart contracts platform.

Comparatively, 30% of the survey participants were bullish on Bitcoin – down from 40% in the previous report. But while most of the big money is betting on ETH, CoinShares highlighted that a growing number of investors are invested in both assets.

Other digital assets that institutional investors are eyeing in 2023 are Polkadot, Cardano, XRP, Solana and Polygon.

Why are institutional investors adding crypto to portfolios?

According to CoinShares, the main reasons behind increased interest and investment in digital assets are speculation and the need to gain exposure to opportunities across the distributed ledger technology ecosystem. 

Notably, more clients saw the recent crypto crash (after the collapse of FTX) as an opportunity, with a growing number directing fund managers to add crypto to their positions. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most popular.

But the asset manager says crypto’s increased correlation to equities might be the reason fewer investors cite diversification as a key factor.

“When asked what reasons prevented investors from investing in digital assets, it is interesting to note that reputational risk saw a significant decline while regulation is still an important consideration,” CoinShares noted.

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