Weekly Update: LDO Outperforms, MATIC Rises By 65% While Ethereum Gains Momentum

As markets responded to Shadow Fork 9’s announcement, ETH was back in the green. Ethereum is currently regaining ground and progressing due to the favorable market situation. 

At the same time, some other altcoins are doing well on the weekly chart, such as Polygon (MATIC) and Lido DAO (LDO), which have seen considerable price increases over the last week and in the previous 24 hours as well.

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Only a few of the top 100 cryptocurrencies have been able to generate double-digit gains, and the rest are still suffering from the effects of the merciless crypto storm. One of them is Polygon (MATIC), which demonstrated a sizable gain.

Per the CoinGecko statistics, MATIC is currently trading at $0.91, up almost 19.88% over the past 24 hours and a notable 65% gain over the last seven days. After Disney revealed that Polygon (MATIC) had been chosen for its “Accelerator Program,” the price of the coin increased quickly. 

The list also includes Lido DAO (LDO), which has experienced a significant gain. The decentralized autonomous organization’s governance token, LDO, outperformed over the last seven days with a remarkable increase of 167%. Its current price is $1.68, with an upward thrust of 6.1%throughout the previous 24 hours.

Even though LDO was able to recover its losses from the June decline, in which it fell to a low of roughly $0.432899, it yet hasn’t found the support it needs to climb back to the May high of $3.3816.

Ethereum (ETH), the second largest coin, has recently crossed the $1,400 threshold. It has gained 9.31% over the previous 24 hours and is currently trading at $1,482.01. The currency has increased by around 29.32% over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap, and is thus gaining momentum.

According to nomics data, ETH’s overall market cap increased by 8.78% over the last 24 hours to $179.11 billion. However, the price increase occurred after a week of poor performance and unfavorable market circumstances.

Although, the specific cause is unknown. The fact is that the price spike occurred right after the ninth shadow fork’s introduction on July 14. It implies that the price spike may be caused by the rising popularity of Ethereum and its impending “Merge” to Proof-of-Stake.

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The Merge was covered during the most recent Consensus Layer Call of the Ethereum Foundation, which took place on Thursday. Tim Beiko, an Ethereum Foundation member, proposed September 19 as a tentative launch date, providing the most unambiguous indication that the Merge would happen soon.

The merge upgrade combines Ethereum’s consensus and execution layers to switch the network from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. It is anticipated to cut the network’s energy use by 99.95%, but it won’t necessarily result in lower transaction fees (gas).