Ethereum Down 86% in Q3 2022 Despite Awaiting The Merge

Bitcoin and Ethereum were down for the week, while other top coins suffered bigger losses

The price of Ethereum (ETH) is down 31% for the week—and a remarkable 86% from its all-time high, according to CoinGecko. After the Ethereum blockchain did away with mining and completed its long-anticipated transition to proof of stake in mid-September, miners launched a competing fork called EthereumPoW as a way to continue their mining operations. Reportedly, Ethereum recorded $1.96 billion in net revenue in the second quarter of this year. Unfortunately, the third quarter was just a measly $274.12 million. Ethereum was down 86% in Q3 2022, then what was the use of the ETH merge?

With this being the case, the ETH Merge that took place on the 15th of September this year was not able to revive the ETH network. As per the current state of the network's revenue, Q3 has less ETH demand. In addition, the price of the altcoin king was predominantly bearish for its latest session. Nonetheless, there were a few upticks recorded in the quarter.

According to Bankless, the number of ETH active addresses picked up a 3.09% increase from its previous quarter. This took the total number of active addresses to 506,384. There was also a surge in ETH staking, as the deposit contract surged 80% to 14.1 million depositors. Of the 14.1 million, there were 442,000 unique validators and 84,600 unique depositors. Ethereum price is falling constantly and there is no sign of recovering.

The Merge Upgrade is an Inspiration for all Crypto Developers

Ethereum is down but Merge will boost crypto prices in the long run and will significantly change the future of the digital asset market. Even though the upgrade is based on the ETH network, it will power innovations throughout the crypto ecosystem. Cryptocurrency trading and investing are also been speculated to rise in recent years, as the overall market value of digital assets skyrockets. The primary attraction of the Merge is, that it will change Ethereum to proof-of-stake.

Earlier, the crypto used the same consensus mechanism as Bitcoin which was extremely energy-intensive and used huge amounts of electricity to process new transactions on the network. But the proof-of-stake mechanism operates in a different way which is far more sustainable. The proof-of-stake algorithm uses validators. A validator can be anybody who possesses at least 32 ETH tokens to stake in the network. Users can also participate with smaller amounts of tokens through staking pools or cryptocurrency exchanges. Using this way, the developers claim that the network will become 99% more efficient and sustainable. However, the upgrade does not solve other ETH network issues that might increase the cryptocurrency's capacity to process transactions but hold on, those upgrades are all lined up to be implemented, now that the Merge has been released.

What does the shift to the PoS network really mean for investors?

Experts claim that for ordinary investors, the Merge should mean nothing. Ideally, investors have been excited about the upgrade because it is only supposed to help the Ethereum price surge and change the price dynamics of the market. Quicker transactions and lower fees might eventually benefit investors in the long term, but it would also add more value to Ethereum's native token, ETH, which investors can use to make transactions across multiple platforms. The integration of the PoS is helping the crypto add more investors to its network, besides when the supply of tokens decreases, the value of individual coins will increase, which might then generate some value for traders.

The Merge is also expected to make the network more secure, protecting investors from random attacks and thefts. However, the emergence of the Merge does not mean that Ethereum is no more volatile. Right after the launch of the Merge upgrade, the ETH price dropped. Currently, at the time of writing this article, Ethereum is hovering around the US$1,300 mark. The Merge will definitely have a positive effect on the price of Ethereum, but those effects might not be longstanding, and the price upside will definitely not be sustainable. Hence, investors still have to be extremely careful before investing in Ethereum and other cryptos.