It’s been a volatile but positive week for cryptocurrencies as traders ignored warnings from crypto winter veterans predicting a further fall and re-entered the market at the first sign of rising prices.
Evidence of a reversal of sentiment can be found in the index Crypto fear & greedwhich climbed into the fear zone after spending most of its time in extreme fear territory due to the price crash in May and June.
As for what triggered the rally out of great fear, a closer look at the timeline announced the date of the Ethereum merger, which came on July 15.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView show that after the Merge date was revealed, the price of Ether (ETH) rose 38.5% from $1,190 to a daily high of $1,650 on July 22, amid a generally green day for the market.
Together with the rise in the price of Ether, the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has increased by 15% in the past week to its current value of $1.051 billion.
Ethereum-related projects gain momentum
Further evidence that the excitement surrounding Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake (PoS) is driving the rally can be found by looking at last week’s major players, including multiple projects related to the leading smart contract protocol.
When Ethereum switches to the PoS protocol, the massive mining network that currently secures the network will be orphaned and will need a new chain to mine.
Ethereum Classic (ETC) is one of the best options for network design and compatibility, since it is technically the original Ethereum proof-of-work chain.
The price of ETC has reached 100% in the last nine days, which suggests that a large number of operators are also planning the migration of miners to Ethereum Classic, which could be good for token prices in the long term.
Also read: Bitcoin opens at Wall Street, Ethereum hits $1.6K, six-week high
Liquid stacking builds momentum
Another notable winner benefiting from Ethereum-related developments is Lido DAO (LDO), a liquid stack platform that allows depositors to stake their ether in exchange for steETH, which is a peer-to-peer representation that can to be used as collateral in decentralization. finance.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView show that since the Merge data was released, the price of LDO has risen 80% from $0.885 to the current price of $1.59, after briefly hitting the low of $1.92 on July 20.
In addition to the boost brought by its association with the Ethereum Merge, the LDO price has also benefited from the addition of support for other protocols such as Solana (SOL) and Polkadot (DOT), as well as its expansion to Layer 2 protocols.
Lido is launching steETH on Layer 2 ️
Ethereum is scaling, and so is Lido.
Lido stakeholders will soon be able to use their stETH assets in DeFi on Layer 2.
Read more about it here: https://t.co/QCsQry4V41
—Lido (@LidoFinance) July 18, 2022
Lido launches stETH on layer 2. ️ Ethereum is scaling, and so is Lido. Lido stakeholders will soon be able to use their stETH assets in DeFi on Layer 2. Read more here: https://t.co/QCsQry4V41 — Lido (@LidoFinance) July 18, 2022
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