It hasn’t been the best of years for Ethereum [ETH], the world’s most popular altcoin. While its price action has often been found wanting, many in the community remain optimistic thanks to the hopes attached to the upcoming Merge.
This optimism can be evidenced by the fact that Ethereum records its largest single-day exchange outflows in 2022, according to a recent report from IntoTheBlock.
Withdrawing a cryptocurrency from centralized exchanges has often led to price surges on the charts. It is a sign that investors are confident in the long-term standing of the asset and are willing to move it off exchanges into wallets and cold storages. By extension, outflows are also a sign of falling selling pressure in the market.
The last time such numbers were reported by Ethereum was in October 2021. It was followed by a 15% increase over the following 10 days. Can we expect the same this time around? Well, some promising developments seem to imply the same thing.
In addition to the aforementioned data, there are further positive affirmations coming from the Ethereum 2.0 camp.
There has been an increase in the amount of ETH being staked. The same has increased by 20% in 90 days and by 10% in the last 30 days alone. These numbers represent growing trust in the community as it appears to be an important part of ETH 2.0. More than 10 million ETH has been stored in the proof-of-stake contract which represents 8.3% of the total Ether available in circulation.
Wait…. There’s More!
“We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this week.
Although the launch details are still unclear, the announcement has raised a lot of optimism within the Ethereum community. This, especially since the blockchain already supports around 80% of all NFTs traded, according to IntoTheBlock.
On the contrary, Zuckerberg might even decide not to go along with Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum. Instead, he might head for more efficient models of Solana or Polygon. Worth pointing out, however, that the Meta NFTs are still in the early stages and more information should follow soon.
And after?
The Ethereum Core developers concluded their last meeting on March 19, 19. The agenda for this included the merger, Beacon chain withdrawals, EIP-4844, and the future of core EIPs.
While the meeting was scheduled well in time, the same coincided with one of Ethereum’s team leads and developers commenting,
“There have been engineering attempts to reduce complexity (division of modules in Erigon, distribution of responsibilities in The Merge). Yet there has never been an attempt to reduce the complexity of the protocol. We’re already past the point where anyone has a full system picture. It’s bad.”
