Ethereum otherwise known as $ETH is one of the first crypto currencies to come out after Bitcoin. There was once a day when you really had about 5 decent choices in cryptocurrencies to buy into and Ethereum was one of them. Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and maybe some off the wall forks like Bitcoin cash etc. Outside of that nothing else really existed at the time and since then Ethereum has been one of the best performers outside of Bitcoin itself.

Ethereum has gone through rapid advancements in the last few years from a once proof of work token to a now proof of stake token. Outside of that it also ushered in smart contracts, NFTs and Play2Earn gaming. It's been at the front of most large advancements in the cryptocurrency and blockchain systems.

$ETH hit a All Time High (ATH) in the last bull run pushing upwards of $4,500 before retracting back down into the low $1,000's during the bear market. Now it's on a rampage north again hitting nearly $4,000 again or roughly 300%-400% increase since the bear market.

Next Weeks Updates

Ethereum is about to undergo yet another big change that's slated for release next week. A common issue that's always held back the bull markets for Ethereum is the slow blocks (Every 3 minutes) and the massive fees that come with it as people start using the chain more and more. In fact just the other day I already had to pay upwards of $7 per transaction and during the last bull run paid $50 per transaction.

It's a system that ultimately kills itself and prices everyone else out except for major players. But that all might finally change with the newest update slated to go live next week called Cancun-Deneb Upgrade. The goal of this update is to decrease gas fees by 10x-100x depending on how other applications start to use it.

On top of that it's expected to also massively increase the throughput of the blockchain to up to 100,000 transactions per second.

It's always been the idea for Ethereum to do this on what is known as a layer two option. We have seen a number of these in the past most notable being Polygon (MATIC). You also have a few others doing this as well such as Arbitrum, OP, Manta, Starknet etc. These all require some amount of Ethereum and their own token to interact with it. They mainly group transactions together on their own lay2 blockchain that's faster and has less fees and then push that data in one large lumpsum to the Ethereum mainnet blockchain.

These layer 2 options offer lower fee and faster execution of transactions which run around $0.55 or less per transaction at the moment. Still not crazy good or crazy fast in terms of what they can do but for sure faster and better than Ethereum currently with it's $7 fee. I'd much rather save myself $6.50 per transaction.

EIP-4844 which will be going out next week features just this. It works with layer 2 tokens like Polygon etc and gives them a special code to add their transactions on to the Ethereum mainnet. However it does it at a much lower cost to the layer 2 blockchain because the footprint of it becomes much smaller. This should start to possibly bring down fees on all layer 2 tokens as it will require less Ethereum for them to post the transactions. What was once $0.55 could be reduced down to $0.055 and allow for 10x or higher the amount of transactions to take place.

This is exactly why this is so powerful. As the bull market heats up if this solution was not in place we would simply repeat massive fees once again. But there's a more robust layer two system and now more efficient system to deal with which should allow things to scale at 10x to 100x what it was before.

That could mean a $4,000 ETH price might be worth $20,000+ this bull run. Now of course that's all speculation and it might have the opposite effect being that things are so much cheaper the demand for Ethereum could go down. That's why it's important to do your own research and take responsibility for your own investment actions.

Also it's going to take time. Just because this new system comes online does not mean every layer 2 is going to use it and if they do it's going to take some time for them to connect into it and learn it.

ETH Is BURNING

Another key part to Ethereum looking at massive growth is that there's actully less and less of it happening all the time right now. As more people continue to use the chain and fees only continue to increase what we are seeing happen is $ETH getting burned like a wildfire putting the BTC halving to shame honestly.

ETF /ETP

We also have a very possible major news in terms of ETF's being approved for Ethereum. I don't think it's a matter of if but a matter of when. If it happens while the bull market is kicking then I have a feeling we will see the effects of this as well like we have been seeing for the price of Bitcoin lately.

What are you thoughts on these soon to come changes for Ethereum?