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In mid-April, Ethereum (ETH -0.00%) completed its highly anticipated Shapella upgrade. This marked the first major upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain since The Merge took place last September. Ethereum is now up almost 60% for the year and recently broke through the $2,000 mark before retreating a bit.

But Ethereum is still well below its 52-week high of $3,026, so there's work to be done. The next major catalyst for Ethereum could be another planned tech upgrade, tentatively scheduled for early 2024. So what are the chances of Ethereum breaking through the $3,000 level before that happens?

Ethereum's transformation from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake blockchain due to The Merge last year was a titanic technological accomplishment. Consequently, many investors anticipated that this transformation would greatly boost Ethereum's overall performance. So far, reviews have been mixed.

That's why I think the next upgrade cycle for Ethereum is so important. The last upgrade primarily focused on one aspect of Ethereum: crypto staking, whereas this next upgrade will focus on scalability and performance.

Image source: Getty Images.

The two performance metrics investors care most about are transaction processing speeds and transaction fees. Obviously, transaction processing speeds should be as high as possible, and transaction fees should be as low as feasible. Ethereum has always trailed blockchain rivals in these two metrics, and so this is one area where The Merge was really supposed to make a difference.

Remember -- Ethereum once promised speeds of as many as 100,000 transactions per second, and we are currently nowhere close to this number on the main Ethereum blockchain. Even more worrisome, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently warned about the potential for $500 transaction fees in the near future if Ethereum's scalability issues are not resolved.

Given blockchain technology's openness and transparency, tracking the cost of doing business on the Ethereum blockchain is very easy. The number to focus on here is the "gas fee" (i.e., transaction fee) for using Ethereum. This is the cost paid to add a new transaction to the Ethereum blockchain.

Theoretically, Ethereum gas fees should decline over time due to The Merge. But is that really the case? Recently, there has been a 10-month spike in Ethereum gas prices, and the average gas price for Ethereum has been on the increase for months now. The concern is that in a bull market rally, demand for Ethereum could spike and lead to even higher gas prices. If you look at the last bull market rally, for example, there were some incredible spikes in gas prices when Ethereum became almost unusable for average users.

Think about the way the cost of gas works in real life. The greater the demand for gas, the higher the price tends to go. This is basic supply and demand. During the peak summer driving season, for instance, gas prices tend to rise.Well, the same thing happens in the blockchain and crypto world. The greater the demand for Ethereum, the higher its gas prices tend to go. And in a crypto bull market rally -- the equivalent of peak summer driving season -- blockchain gas fees can skyrocket.

That's why scalability is such a priority for Ethereum. Gas fees must be under control before the next big crypto rally, or people could decide to abandon Ethereum for cheaper blockchains. Sky-high Ethereum gas fees are much like experiencing sticker shock at the pump. This sort of sticker shock has been a problem in the past with Ethereum when non-fungible token (NFT) gas fees were sometimes higher than the cost of the underlying NFT.

If Ethereum is going to skyrocket to $3,000 -- a gain of more than 60% increase from today's prices -- investors will want to see real performance upgrades in the works. Right now, Ethereum depends heavily on Layer 2 scaling solutions to work effectively, and I think that has blinded investors to the underlying performance issues with the core Ethereum blockchain.

As for me, I'm watching several key factors. Gas fees and transaction processing speeds are on the list because they affect the usability of the blockchain so heavily. And I'm also watching updates to Ethereum's official roadmap. If the next tech upgrade gets pushed back to mid- or late-2024, I'm going to be concerned.

That said, I'm still bullish on Ethereum long term. I have confidence in the Ethereum roadmap, and I'm especially pleased that Vitalik Buterin has made performance and scalability such major priorities. This is the key to Ethereum remaining the world's premier Layer 1 blockchain.

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Is It Too Soon to Be Talking About Ethereum at $3,000? - The Motley Fool

After the Shapella update on 12 April, the MetaMask wallet has become one of the main interfaces used by Ethereum users to put their ETH in staking.

There has even been a single MetaMask wallet address that was discovered to have staked as many as 62,240 ETH in a single day, worth more than $110 million.

The reason for this boom is simple: thanks to the Shapella update it is now also possible to withdraw ETH put into staking, whereas before they were not withdrawable.

So before Shapella, anyone who wanted to put ETH in staking had to accept the idea that they could no longer withdraw them indefinitely, but after Shapella this limitation simply disappeared. Now anyone who puts ETH in staking can request its withdrawal at any time.

The unlocking of staked ETH led to fears that withdrawals would be many, and that much of the ETH withdrawn might end up being put up for sale causing the price to fall.

This happened only minimally, as according to data from beaconcha.in there have since been only five days of sustained withdrawals, with a peak of 392,000 ETH withdrawn on 15 April. Since the total amount of staked ETH was over 18 million, the volume of withdrawals turned out to be very small, percentage-wise.

Moreover, deposits have increased specifically since 13 April, because now that ETH staked can be withdrawn, one of the main limits to this kind of use of ETH is gone.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the post-Shapella day with the largest deposits of ETH staked, 24 April, saw a total of 126,000 ETH staked, which is less than one-third of the record number of withdrawals on 15 April.

Indeed, overall, the total amount of ETH staked was reduced from over 18 million to just over 17.9 million, or a very small percentage ending balance.

It is worth noting that almost half of those 126,000 ETH staked on 24 April were ETH from the single MetaMask wallet mentioned above.

Note that Metamask does not have its own node on which it allows staking.

ETH staking is in fact done by depositing tokens on a validator node, but Metamask is a wallet and not a node manager.

This wallet enables ETH staking using external service providers, including the worlds largest Ethereum staking pool, namely Lido.

Right now more than 23.5% of all ETH staking is on Lido, followed in second place by Coinbase with less than 10%. So Lido is not only the largest Ethereum staking pool in the world, but it even has more than twice as many ETHs in staking as the second.

In third place is Binance with 3.8%, and in fourth place is Kraken with 3.6%.

Also worth noting is that over 40% of the ETHs staked do not appear to have been deposited on a staking pool, but were probably staked directly on user-owned nodes.

Metamask does not appear in this ranking, simply because it is not a staking pool, but only an interface that allows the use of staking pools such as Lido.

It is worth adding that a few days ago Metamask published a post on its official blog informing users how they can proceed with the withdrawal of ETH placed in staking.

Since Shapella, the price of Ethereum has experienced two significant declines.

The first on 19 April, and the second on 21 April. However, between yesterday and today, the price went up a bit.

It is worth noting that precisely on 19 and 20 April, after three days of reduced withdrawals, the ETH withdrawn from staking had begun to rise again.

On the 21st the withdrawals actually stopped, and the price stopped falling. The 24th was another day of sustained withdrawals, but the price of ETH fell only slightly.

On the 25th the withdrawals almost stopped, and the price of ETH rebounded. Moreover, on 25 April there was also a sharp increase in ETH staking deposits. Against 31,000 ETH withdrawn there were 126,000 ETH deposited.

So at this stage the balance between ETH put into staking and ETH withdrawn from staking does indeed seem to be influencing the price.

Perhaps it is not a direct influence, but mediated by the sentiment of speculators who observe that data to work out their buying or selling strategies.

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Ethereum: MetaMask wallet among top stakers - The Cryptonomist

Bitcoin outflows hit $53.1 million last weekmeaning that, for the first time in six weeks, more funds flowed out of digital asset investment products than in.

Profit-taking is largely to blame, especially considering there were few macroeconomic triggers that could influence BTC's price, says a new report from digital asset investment firm CoinShares.

And that would suggest that meaningfully staying above the psychologically significant threshold of $30,000 could be a tough nut to crack for bulls. As of Monday morning, Bitcoin was sliding towards $27,000 and down 9% from the last week, according to CoinGecko.

Overall, digital asset investment products saw total outflows of $30 million in the seven days through April 21with CoinShares XBT, ProShares, and 3iQ the hardest-hit providers. The providers all manage exchange-traded products pegged to cryptocurrencies, an indirect way for institutional investors to get exposure to crypto markets without actually holding it.

But the devil's in the details. According to CoinShares head of research James Butterfill, there's one cryptocurrency that's bucking the trend in a big way.

Basking in the glow of the successful "Shapella" upgrade, Ethereum actually enjoyed inflows of $17 million last weekputting it far ahead of major altcoins, like Solana, Cardano, XRP, and Litecoin, which were mostly flat.

This indicates investors are feeling confident now that validators on Ethereum's proof-of-stakenetwork can withdraw staked ETH if they so wish.

Butterfill also revealed that inflows into ETH-based funds came solely from Europe, which is fresh from approving much-welcomed, landmark legislation on cryptocurrencies.

All of this comes as regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. casts a long shadow over American crypto firmswith the SEC's crackdown potentially prompting investors to sit on the sidelines.

There was also a clear continental divide when it came to Bitcoin.

"Regionally, the profit-taking was almost solely from North America, which saw outflows totaling $54 million," Butterfill wrote. "This was offset by the continued optimistic sentiment in Germany which saw inflows totalling $29 million."

That optimism in Germany has undoubtedly been driven by the country's friendly tax regime, which states that cryptocurrency offloaded after 12 months isn't subject to capital gains.

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Bitcoin's Six-Week Hot Streak Ends as Institutions Turn to Ethereum - Decrypt

Tomiwabold Olajide

Over three-quarters of Ethereum (ETH) withdrawals linked to just two entities

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On-chain analytics firm Nansen provides an analysis of ETH principal withdrawals and the entities behind the move.

It should be recalled that the Shapella upgrade, which enables withdrawals from the ETH beacon chain, was triggered on April 12.

According to Nansen, Kraken and Coinbase account for the majority (78.3%) of the principal withdrawals at 870,688 ETH.

It reports that the third round of principal withdrawals happened within the last 24 hours, and there was also a substantial amount of deposits that kept the total ETH locked at a higher low than the previous wave. It gives the current figure of total ETH locked as 18,629,009 ETH.

Per the information Nansen sharedon April 24, 894,671 ETH are waiting for full exit, which is about 4.7% of the total ETH on the Beacon chain, inclusive of reward. A total of 27,809 validators are waiting for a full exit.

Meanwhile, the total ETH locked hit a new all-time high since the Shapella upgrades on April 24 at 18,879,775 ETH locked. The total ETH locked in this context refers to all ETH that "is out of circulation," which includes ETH staked on the Beacon chain, ETH deposited to the Beacon contract but not validated yet and rewards on the Beacon contract.

In similar news, Binance recently announced it was rebranding ETH 2.0 Staking to ETH Staking and introducing Wrapped Beacon ETH (WBETH) on the ETH Staking service, effective April 27. WBETH is a new liquid staking token, where 1 WBETH represents 1 BETH and the total staking rewards accrued by the BETH token on ETH Staking.

According to CoinShares, digital asset investment products saw outflows totaling $30 million last week, ending a six-week run of inflows.

Ethereum, on the other hand, saw inflows totaling $17 million last week, suggesting there is increasing confidence among investors following the implementation of the Shapella upgrade.

After crossing back under $2K last week, Ethereum's network saw its fees explode to their highest level since May 2022. Though still relatively high, fees have been discounted by 35% since, on-chain analytics firm Santiment reported.

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Ethereum: Majority of ETH Withdrawals Controlled by Two Entities - U.Today

Ethereum (ETH) is getting set for its next big upgrade after the September Merge, with the coming Shanghai upgrade. Litecoin (LTC) is another project heading for a blockchain upgrade with another halving event. The Merge failed to spur the price of Ethereum (ETH) and the market trend will determine the path of Litecoin (LTC). Analysts currently prefer the outlook for Uwerx which has niche crypto potential and is expected to see its price soar in the year ahead.

Ethereum (ETH) was the big focus of the crypto market in August and September last year after the project announced a long-awaited move to Proof-of-Work mining. The move made the project 99.9% more energy efficient but developers said late on that it would not solve the issues with gas fees and transaction speeds. The Merge happened around 15 September, but the price failed to push higher after the FTX collapse.

Ethereum (ETH) currently has $28 around billion in Total Value Locked on the chain but that is down from $100 billion at the peak. Ethereum (ETH) has also suffered a big drop in NFT sales over the last year. The next upgrade for Ethereum (ETH) will be the Shanghai hard fork, which is set to release staked tokens and remain locked following the September upgrade. There is a risk that some of those tokens could be sold and weigh on the price.

Litecoin (LTC) is awaiting another halving event later in the year, with the third of its kind happening on August 3. A crypto halving is when mining fees are cut in half for newly minted coins. The halving also cuts the supply in half and is designed to reduce inflationary effects on the token. The market assumption is that these events are bullish, but Litecoin (LTC) has not been able to hold onto previous gains.

Recent analysis for Litecoin (LTC) has also hinted at some potential selling in the coin. Data provider Santiment has warned investors that Litecoins (LTC) price may drop due to an increase in selling activity among larger investors. According to the report, the recent coin distribution for Litecoin (LTC) was seen as a profit-taking move, and investors are probably using the rally to sell out of the project on the recent market gains. Litecoins (LTC) plan to be a mass-adopted payments token has not materialized and investors should forget about big gains in Litecoin (LTC) in 2023.

Uwerx is a new project that is looking to bring a real-world marketplace to the blockchain. Freelance working is becoming more important to the economy and Uwerx will add benefits for employers and workers. The project will begin life as the only blockchain platform and can see first-mover benefits that will put a rocket under its token price.

Uwerx is currently in a token presale and is still under the radar of many investors but that can change in 2023 with marketing efforts and exchange listings.

Uwerx successfully passed an audit with InterFi Network and SolidProof and investors can be sure that it is a safe project, with a 25-year lock-up period on development funds after the presale ends, adding further confidence.

Uwerx has impressed analysts and some are expecting the coin to rocket from the presale price of $0.0075 to $2.80 by Q1 2024. Investors are currently enjoying an additional presale bonus of 25%

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Ethereum (ETH) And Litecoin (LTC) Prepare For Upgrades ... - The Crypto Basic