The price of Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), shows a growing conflict among traders about the market direction for March. This uncertainty has resulted in ETH price consolidating inside a narrow sideways range between $1,600 and $1,700 since Feb. 15. 25% ETH price correction on the table in March The uncertainty stems from Ethereum's long-awaited Shanghai upgrade going live some time in March. Several analysts predict Shanghai's token unlock feature, which will enable stakers to withdraw their vested tokens from Ethereum's proof-of-stake smart contract, will trigger a short-term selloff event. The Ethereum PoS smart contract has attracted more than 17.4 …

The Ethereum ecosystem has seen only 226 validators slashed since the launch of the Beacon Chain on Dec. 1, 2022 — amounting to just 0.04% of 524,060 validators, according to an Ethereum core developer. Slashing is a process where a validator breaches the proof-of-stake consensus rules, which often results in the removal of that validator from the network and slashing a portion of the staked Ether (ETH) that the validator provided as collateral. Such slim odds of being slashed were highlighted by Ethereum core developer “Superphiz” in a Feb. 23 Twitter post, which suggests that people shouldn’t be concerned about …

Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced the Shapella (Shanghai/Capella) upgrade is scheduled for Feb. 28. The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Sepolia network at epoch 56832. Shanghai and Capella are the names of the upcoming Ethereum hard fork. Shanghai is the name of the fork on the execution client side, and Capella is the upgrade name on the consensus layer client side. Some of the key Ethereum improvement proposals (EIP) changes on the execution layer include Warm Coinbase and Beacon chain push withdrawals. The push withdrawals will make way for validator withdrawals from the beacon chain to the …

The Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA), a nonprofit industry alliance, has published two white papers examining on the status of deposit tokens in United States securities and tax law on Feb. 21. The papers were authored by representatives of over 10 industry groups. Liquid staking is the practice on blockchains using a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism of issuing transferrable receipt tokens to show ownership of staked crypto assets or rewards accrued for staking. The tokens are often referred to as liquid staking derivatives, which is a term the POSA objected to as being inaccurate, recommending that they be called liquid staking …

The price of Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), has surged by more than 40% year-to-date to around $1,750, the highest level in seven months. However, ETH price is not out of the woods yet despite several bullish cues such as the Shanghai upgrade in the pipeline. Ethereum price bull trap? Ether's rise has appeared primarily in the wake of similar upside moves elsewhere in the crypto market, responding to lowering inflation that reduces the Federal Reserve's likelihood of raising interest rates aggressively. At the same time, warnings about an imminent bull trap in the risky markets have emerged, which may …

What is the next upgrade for Ethereum? The Shanghai upgrade is a stepping stone toward making the Ethereum blockchain more scalable. Features like sharding, zero-knowledge (ZK)-SNARKs and more, decorate the Ethereum roadmap. The EIPs included in the Shanghai upgrade will be a good step toward achieving sharding later in 2023. Sharding is extremely important to improve higher transaction throughputs as the chain will be able to perform “parallel processing.” Sharding is expected to be achieved in two stages in 2023 and 2024. The first stage brings better data availability to the Ethereum blockchain. Combining that with the rollup feature that …

In a year of crypto upheavals, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement with crypto exchange Kraken, announced on Feb. 9, set off yet another tremor. Agency chief Gary Gensler took to mainstream media last week to explain the agency’s action, which seemed to be an attack on crypto staking — part of the validation mechanism used by a number of blockchain platforms, including Ethereum, the world’s second-largest network. The immediate issue, in the agency’s view, was that Kraken had been selling unregistered investment products. Indeed, it was advertising big returns on staking crypto — up to 21%, Gensler …

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has seen a constant decline in the exchange supply over the past six months post-Merge. Ethereum network went under a major network upgrade in September last year, moving from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network and the event was called the Merge. According to on-chain data shared by the crypto analytic group Santiment, the amount of available ETH sitting on exchanges continues to fall. Since the Merge, there is 37% fewer ETH on exchanges. A constant decline in supply on exchanges is considered a bullish sign as there is less …

A crackdown by the United States securities regulator on crypto staking could have unintended consequences for decentralized finance (DeFi), according to the head of business development at Lido DAO. In a Feb. 13 Bloomberg report Jacob Blish, who leads business development at Lido's decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), said the most significant risk would be if the SEC eventually concluded that no U.S. citizen can interact with crypto staking services, including protocols. "The biggest risk I personally see as a U.S.-based person is if they come down and say you can no longer even interact with or contribute to these types …

The Ethereum Foundation team announced another milestone on the road to the Shanghai upgrade, with the Shapella fork on the Zhejiang testnet moving into the final pre-launch sequence, according to a blog post on Feb 10. The Shapella transition includes "many features," and "most importantly to stakers and the consensus-layer, is the enabling of withdrawals," notes the post, adding that: "Full withdrawals will be available for exited validators, whereas partial withdrawals will be available for active validator balances in excess of 32 ETH." As per the announcement, validators to participate in withdrawals must have a 0x01 execution-layer withdrawal credential. "If …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is ramping up pressure on the crypto sector. On Feb. 9, the SEC reached a $30 million settlement with Kraken over the centralized staking program offered to its users. The news of the crackdown sent Bitcoin (BTC) price to a 3-week low as investors became fearful of the regulatory enforcement. On the news, Ether's (ETH) price also corrected, cementing the token’s worst-performing day of 2023. While the overall crypto market was down after the SEC announcement, bright spots arose with decentralized liquid staking tokens Lido (LDO) and Rocketpool (RPL) and Frax (FXS) …

Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), saw its worst daily performance of the year as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stopped Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, from offering crypto staking services. On Feb. 9, Kraken agreed to pay $30 million to settle the SEC's allegation that it broke securities rules by offering crypto staking services to U.S. retail investors. The news pushed down the prices of many proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain project tokens, in particular. Ethereum, which switched to a staking-based protocol in September 2022, also suffered as a result. On Feb. 9, ETH's price plunged nearly 6.5% to around $1,525, …