Ethereum (ETH) Hits New all-Time High Amid Rising Address Activity

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) is taking up the lead in the crypto market rally. The ETH price shot up 10% hitting a new all-time high of $4,400 and entering the price discovery zone.

Also, the recent ETH price rally comes on the backdrop of strong address activity. On-chain data provider Santiment reported:

The amount of active addresses interacting on $ETH‘s network just reached a 3-week high, creating a #bullish divergence for this key on-chain metric.

Ethereum is so far keeping up with the BTC price rally since the beginning of Q4 2021. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency has gained more than 25% so far this month. Many analysts have been expecting $10K price targets by the end of the year. Besides, there is heavy whale accumulation for ETH over the last few weeks.

Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain Altair Upgrade

Earlier this week, the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon chain underwent the Altair upgrade with uninterrupted finality. This was the first major upgrade since the launch of the Beacon chain last year. Speaking of the development, Preston Van Loon, a developer on the Ethereum 2.0 client Prysm said:

“Altair has activated successfully! Finality was uninterrupted and participation dropped as low as 93.3% in the first Altair epoch (exact number to be confirmed). Participation is now above 95%”.

The Ethereum users who have been staking with ETH 2.0 need to compulsorily upgrade at their end. Validators of the ETH 2.0 who do not cooperate could be penalized. Van Loon further explained the important developments that come along with the Altair upgrade. He noted:

“Altair is an upgrade to the beacon chain that brings light client support, minor patches to incentives, per-validator inactivity leak accounting, an increase in slashing severity, and cleanups to validator rewards accounting for simplified state management.”

While the Ethereum 2.0 developments continue, Vitalik Buterin recently spoke about the importance of Layer 2 scalability solutions and the urgency for its on the PoW Ethereum blockchain.