Ethereum is showing a lot of strength currently doubling in price since March. At the time of publication, Ethereum is trading around $250. If the momentum continues, ETH might soon reach the $300 mark too however, the resistance around $280 where the price got rejected earlier is quite tough and may require a few tests before ETH is actually able to break through it.
A report came out a few days back that Ethereum Whales hold 1/3rd of all ETH in comparison to Bitcoin where the whales control 1/5th of it. Just 376 people have more than 30% of all Ether. The research did exclude all exchanges. So these 376 people are responsible for a relatively small volume of transactions which is approximately 7% and therefore don’t actually have a strong influence on the price of ETH. However, when these addresses do activate to sell off large amounts, they can actually have large effects on the cryptocurrency markets.
Ethereum 2.0 TestNet:
Joseph Lunbin recently commented on Ethereum 2.0 stating that we will see Ethereum become a 1000 times more scalable within 24 months. The time seems longer when we realize how many other blockchains are faster and cheaper than Ethereum and are in one way or another working today but Ethereum does maintain a very strong network effect with massive partnerships, a huge developer community, and various large projects.
The testnet for Ethereum 2.0 has been launched just a couple of weeks ago by Prysmatic Labs with staking implemented. It is just a testnet but it is worth remembering that Ethereum 2.0 is a multi-year effort to create a fully decentralized permissionless platform from programable cryptocurrency and that the move away from Proof of Work must be done correctly as billions of dollars in value are at stake here and retaining high security and decentralization must be adhered to.
The key pieces of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade are as follows:
- The Proof of Stake switching how Ethereum is mined, how the network is secured and how new coins are created.
- Sharding: In order to increase scalability and transaction speed by splitting the large database into smaller and more manageable parts.
- Ewasm: This allows for codes to execute faster among other things as well as expanding coding options and the capabilities for the Ethereum virtual machine.
- Plasma: This is an extra layer that sits on top of the network that can essentially handle massive amounts of transactions. This is being approached by various teams at the moment. Scaling could be happening way sooner than we expected via Plasma.
All these are just a tip on the iceberg in terms of what’s actually happening in the background right now in terms of building Ethereum 2.0 and there is a lot more happening than these things.
Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior to use Ethereum:
In a recent announcement, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior revealed that Ethereum will be used to verify luxury goods for the fashion giants. ConsenSys has teamed up with the fashion houses and Microsoft in order to build a blockchain powered platform that allows customers to verify the authenticity of their luxury goods. The project is being called Aura.
It is based on the Ethereum blockchain & utilized Microsoft Azure and has been designed to serve the entire luxury industry with powerful product tracking and tracing services, and will also offer ethical and environmental information as well as for instructions related to product care and warranty services.
Chainlink Update: Oracles to go live
The decentralized oracles are scheduled to go live on the Ethereum mainnet this month. The decentralized oracles are designed to help smart contracts interact with real-world data. A key feature for many smart contracts which are being built that intend to have that crossover into the real world and require that real-world data. This is an important move for both Ethereum and Chainlink as it will be the largest and most reputable
