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Ethereum traded just above $4,000 on Thursday after a short rebound from $3,978. The move left the asset up about 0.35% for the day. Market data from Bitstamp shows traders still locked in a standoff, with price movement caught between tight resistance and firm support.
The $4,288 level remains the ceiling for buyers. It has rejected every rally so far and matches the 0.236 Fibonacci retracement. On the other side, bids are clustering between $3,800 and $4,200 - the zone traders call the Fair Value Gap. The tug-of-war there continues to absorb most of the market’s volume.
Support sits near $3,556, marking the 0.5 Fibonacci line. Below that, the next cushions rest at around $3,228 and $2,762. If sellers push the price under $3,556, a slide toward the $3,200 area becomes likely.
Momentum remains muted. The daily RSI stands at 43, under its 49 average. A climb back above 50 would suggest stronger buying interest. For now, the chart shows compression between two major trendlines, a setup that often precedes a sharp break in either direction.
A clean move above $4,288 could open the way toward $4,600 and later $4,943. Failure to hold current levels could renew pressure toward mid-range supports before the month closes.
While traders weigh direction, Ethereum’s development team continues to make progress. Brevis this week revealed Pico Prism, a new zkEVM system that verifies blocks with gaming-grade GPUs. The upgrade aims to make validation faster and more efficient.
Testing showed that 99.6% of blocks were verified in under 12 seconds, and nearly all others finished within the ten-second benchmark set by the Ethereum Foundation. The average proof took 6.9 seconds for blocks capped at 45 million gas units.
Brevis claims the advance could make Ethereum roughly one hundred times quicker, light enough for phones to act as full nodes. Instead of each validator re-executing every transaction, Pico Prism allows one node to generate proofs for others to confirm in milliseconds.
To run its trials, Brevis used a cluster of 64 Nvidia RTX 5090 cards worth $128,000 - about half the cost of the former top-end SP1 Hypercube setup. The company plans to reach the same performance using only 16 GPUs in its next test phase.
The Ethereum Foundation called Pico Prism a major step toward balancing scalability with decentralization. The network’s roadmap now points to a full transition from re-execution to zero-knowledge proof verification, aiming for 10,000 transactions per second.
Analyst Ryan Sean Adams believes that at the current pace, throughput could triple each year and reach that mark by 2029. The upcoming Fusaka update, scheduled for December, will introduce EIP-7825, setting a 30-million-gas limit per transaction to ease congestion.
Developers see Ethereum evolving into a true zero-knowledge blockchain. The base layer will handle large DeFi operations, while Layer 2 networks process everyday transactions. Vitalik Buterin noted that PeerDAS, a feature within Fusaka, will be key to building that next-generation network.
Ethereum continues to hover around $4,000 as traders look for a breakout above $4,288 or a deeper pullback to support. Meanwhile, Brevis’ zkEVM Pico Prism could redefine block validation, offering near-instant verification at lower cost. With the Fusaka upgrade coming soon, Ethereum appears ready to move toward higher speed, stronger scalability, and a broader role in global finance.
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