Ethereum, the largest altcoin in the world, has one of the most promising ecosystems in the crypto universe. on the contrary, many will disagree when looking at the state of the flowing price of Ether.
For example, at the time of writing, it is trading much lower than the most recent all-time high. In fact, it’s just trading at $3.2k after a 4% correction over 24 hours.
And yet, it continues to show strong underlying growth. Below is a brief overview of some of these metrics.
Positive fundamentals
Ethereum’s much-anticipated migration to Ethereum 2.0 continues to receive headlines over and over again. Ethereum 2.0 is an upgrade to the Ethereum Network that improves the speed, efficiency, and scalability of the network. This will take Ethereum to the next level as it will be able to do more transactions, avoid congestion, etc.
Now for latest status update.
The amount of Ether locked in the Ethereum 2.0 contract has exceeded 9 million ETH. Etherscan.io data indicates that there is approximately 9,062,418 ETH worth more than $28 billion (at the time of writing) in the ETH 2.0 contract.
Source: Etherscan
Comparing the same data set with last year, ETH has indeed come a long way. The amount of ETH locked in the contract has increased by 22.29% since the first week of September 2021 when the contract held 7.4 million ether.
This is indeed a bullish development for the second largest cryptocurrency.
Driving through the storm
This has certainly happened to the various ETH proponents in the ecosystem. According to on-chain data, Ethereum addresses holding balances now total over 68 million. This number rarely falls despite a tough price history last year, maintaining steady growth alongside the June-August period.
Daily ETH transactions are at approximately 1.2 million, at the time of writing.
Quantily $ ETH Ownership continued to grow at 68.34 million addresses, a new all-time high.
While the price of # Ethereum remains below the sport level, the number of transactions remains close to high with the number of holders growing, reflecting growing demand. pic.twitter.com/AERkYip3bx
– IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) January 17, 2022
The widespread popularity of NFTs and its valuation is one of the key catalysts for adding value to the aforementioned statistic.
For reference, consider the tweet mentioned below. Just recently, former Messari Research CEO Ryan Watkins tweeted,
I don’t think you guys appreciate how much asylum NFTs right now.
And the crazy thing is, the industry as a whole could grow 10x from here and still be a blip compared to the rest of the industry.
NFT: 12 billion dollars
Total Cryptocurrencies: 2 Trillion Dollars pic.twitter.com/jBFPqlS86p
– Ryan Watkins (@RyanWatkins_) January 18, 2022
Having said that, without any positive price movements in the market, Ethereum’s market performance is now considered bearish. This, despite the fact that the on-chain metrics say otherwise.