Only In Crypto: A Croissant Explains Ethereum Hottest Trends Post Merge

Ethereum trends are higher as it reclaimed the mid-area at around $3,000. The second crypto by market cap stands as the third-best performer in the top 10 by market capitalization.

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At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) trades at $3,400 with a 7% and 19% profit in the last 24-hours and 7-day chart. Only Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL) record a better performance on this rank with a 39% and 26% profit, respectively.

The crypto market in general has been trending upwards on the back of relief in macro-economic factors. Trading firm QCP Capital believes the bullish price action comes from the positive reaction to the U.S. Federal Reserve (FED) increase in interest rates.

The financial institution began to tighten its monetary policy and hinted at further rates hikes. Bitcoin and Ethereum reacted to the upside as the FED acted within expectations and investors felt more clarity.

In addition, ETH’s price seems to be benefiting from the apparent imminent deployment of “The Merge”. An event is set to combine Ethereum’s execution layer with its consensus layer, and fully unlock the network’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) potential.

As ETH is set to reduce its energy consumption, to implement new scaling solutions, a pseudonym analyst called CroissantEth attempted to break down these “fundamental changes” to the network. In addition, the analyst tried to point out the new trends to watch as Eth 2.0 comes into the picture.

The analyst said:

𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘌𝘛𝘏 2.0 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥? No. Not just any. We’ve already talked about ETH 2.0. In this thread I will focus specifically on game-changers. Things that are only made possible thanks to ETH 2.0 & the upgrades it introduces.

At the top of the list, and one of the reasons why Ethereum has seen an increase in institutional interest, the analyst mentioned the potential introduction of staking pools for ETH. The asset will increase its potential as a yield generator and holders will be able to earn transaction fees and extra rewards.

This could potentially impact ETH’s adoption levels and increase inactive users. In addition, the analyst highlighted the introduction of staking derivatives that could provide users with further incentives to lock ETH.

This could contribute to the ETH as a deflationary asset narrative and potentially triggered a supply shock for this digital asset. Rewards and incentives will be a big part of Eth 2.0 together with scalability. On the latter, the analyst said:

Cross-chain stuff is cool & all, but how about cross-rollup tooling? This is something people have not watched closely enough. dApps that bridge the gap between optimistic & zkrollups have a great future ahead of them.

Optimism and Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Proofs technology could potentially allow Ethereum to scale and process thousands of transactions per second. This has been the biggest driver for ETH “Killers”, but the trend could reverse if people have access to cheaper ETH transactions.

9. Privacy

I couldn’t mention zkproofs without mentioning privacy, right?

Our privacy should be of utmost importance to us.

zkproofs enable zero knowledge verification of arbitrary functions without disclosing underlying info. This is huge.

Ex. .@Sismo_eth pic.twitter.com/2voucJ86cD

— croissant (@CroissantEth) March 28, 2022

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The analyst named other trends that have the power to take Ethereum to a new era of adoption and new use cases. Croissant concluded:

All of what I’ve described in this thread may be the spark we need for the next big run. If it plays out accordingly, we have a refreshing new chapter coming to ETH. These aren’t things you’ll want to ignore… I hope everyone enjoyed this thread!