Following the market bounce this week, Ethereum (ETH) has been one of the most profitable tokens with better market performances than most altcoins, including Cardano(ADA), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Solana (SOL).
The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap began the week trading around the price region of $1,588 before rising by about 12% to almost hit the $1,800 price level for the first time since August 2022.
Following this impressive price gain, ETH experienced a minor pullback which saw its market price fall to around $1,628. However, ETH soon resumed its bullish course with steady gains over the last two days.
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According to data from Coingecko, Ether is maintaining its upward momentum gaining by 4% in the last 24 hours, thus, moving its overall gains in the last seven days to an impressive 20.2%.
ETH’s positive price movement is quite important, especially with the upcoming Shanghai upgrade of the Ethereum network. In the latest development on that front, Ethereum users will be pleased to know that there is now a confirmed date for the Shanghai network update.
At the time of writing, ETH is exchanging hands at $1,744.12, with its daily trading volume set at $11.7 million. In addition, the altcoin maintains its 17.1% market dominance with a market cap value of $208.5 billion.
When Is The Official Date For The Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade?
Following the successful Shanghai upgrade of the Goerli testnet on March 14, it was only a matter of time before the Ethereum mainnet followed suit. At the Ethereum developers meeting yesterday, an official date was finally chosen to implement the much-anticipated hard fork of the Ethereum network.
According to a tweet from popular Ethereum developer Tim Beiko, the Shanghai Upgrade is scheduled to take place in four weeks on April 12 at exactly 10:27 pm UTC. This announcement has sparked much excitement within the Ethereum community and the crypto space in general.
Significance Of The Shanghai Upgrade
The Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade is one of the most anticipated events in the crypto space for 2023. Like any upgrade, it promises to introduce various exciting features, including significant improvements in scalability, security, and smart contract operations.
However, the most notable point about the Shanghai upgrade is that it will finally allow the withdrawals of staked ETH. Currently, there are about 17.5 million ETH tokens worth $29 billion staked on the Ethereum network.
Following the Shanghai Upgrade, there may be massive withdrawals of these tokens, which might lead to a dramatic rise in the liquid volume of ETH in the market.
However, there is lots of speculation on how this potential development will affect the operations of liquid staking protocols, which are the largest contributor to the ETH staking market, owning 32% of all staked Ether tokens.
Featured Image: Bloomberg, chart from Tradingview.