The Ethereum blockchain will undergo its next scheduled update in March 2023, known as the Shanghai Upgrade.
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Ethereum, the second-most popular cryptocurrency, started the day at $1,626.68 on January 22. It has reached a high of $1,635.64 and a low of $1,609.35. In the last 24 hours, ETH/USD has decreased by 0.84%, trading at $1,625.85. In addition, the price has gone up by around 5% in the past week.
Increased Active Ethereum Addresses
There are increasingly more Ethereum addresses with a balance above zero. Data from Glassnode indicates that this week, the number of Ethereum addresses reached a new all-time high of 92.5 million.
Active addresses represent the number of distinct addresses sent by a recipient or sender. It only includes those who completed a transaction.
The number of Ethereum's active addresses has significantly increased recently. It shows that Ethereum users are using the network to run programs instead of just holding them in their wallets.
ETH/USD may gain when Ethereum network usage and activity hit new highs.
Shanghai Upgrade Concerns Developers
The Ethereum blockchain will undergo its next scheduled update in March 2023, known as the Shanghai Upgrade. The upgrade will make it simpler to progressively remove the beacon's more than two-year-old stale ETH.
Shanghai will likely be prepared for launch in March, based on all indicators. However, a vocal minority of Ethereum's core developers has recently started to voice concerns about the upgrade's hasty implementation.
They stated that it was being implemented too quickly to prevent public outrage and at the cost of technology investments that could affect the network in the long run.
Micah Zoltu, a network core developer, and some of the network's other 30 or so core developers are worried that a sudden decision to defer a technical change to Shanghai may subject Ethereum to excessive technological debt with unforeseeable long-term outcomes.
On January 19, Zoltu voiced his concern on the all-core developers' call, stating that it seemed like they were not considering Ethereum's long-term viability. The price of ETH/USD has not benefited from the news.
Ethereum Smart Contracts Implementation
The Alchemy blockchain software development company published its Q4 2022 Web3 development report on January 17. According to the report, in 2022, the number of smart contracts that were executed on the Ethereum mainnet increased by 300%.
Moreover, despite the low market of 2022, the increase in smart contract implementation nearly equaled the rate of growth seen in 2021. The estimate shows that there will be 4.6 million active smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain by the end of Q4 2022.
Deployed smart contracts on Ethereum's Goerli testnet also reached an all-time high of 2.7 million, up by 187% over the last three months of 2022 and up to 721% year over year.
It suggests that more decentralized applications (dapps) may be launched soon. As a result, the development of smart contracts is driving the price of ETH/USD up.
Ethereum Price Prediction
The price of Ethereum in the last 24 hours was $1,625 with an $8 billion trading volume. The ETH/USD pair reached major resistance near $1,680 and dropped to find support at $1,610.
The ETH/USD pair has formed an upward channel on the 4-hour time scale, showing that the bullish trend in ETH could continue.
Source- Trading View
On the plus side, increasing demand might force Ethereum's price beyond its resistance at $1,680 and up to $1,750. A negative breakdown of $1,600 might drive the selling trend to $1,560.
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