What Is the Shanghai Upgrade?

The next stage in Ethereum’s roadmap is the first of two major events this year, aside from sharding that will take place later in the year. The Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade is the biggest Ethereum upgrade since The Merge. It will finally allow ETH stakers to unstake and withdraw ETH rewards from the network.

The Shanghai Upgrade is slated to take place in April 2023. The upgrade has five different aspects to it, but what is of the greatest importance is that users will be able to withdraw their staked ETH for the first time. Many of these users will be withdrawing their ETH after two years since the staking market began.
The upgrade is raising many questions like what this means for investors moving forward and what will be the impact of this upgrade on the price of ETH.

But before diving deeper into these questions, let’s touch on some basics!

It all started with the concept of liquid staking - which has rapidly risen to become one of the most important sectors in crypto, standing in second place by total value locked (TVL) after decentralized exchanges.

Here's the Analysis of #VET :

#VET is been trending lower low with the bearish strong bearish market structure. Price bouncing off from the support zone of $0.022 and currently trading at the resistance area of $0.026. Wait for the rejection or flip above the resistance area.

#BTC kept on moving nearby its resistance area and made a small range. Nothing much happening and just couple of news, moving market back and forth.

#EDU rejected from the drawn support around 12% in favor but now its flipped over the resistance now and hodling. Currently price retesting the support and expected to move higher from here and reach around $0.76 resistance area.

The Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index is at 27, the lowest since January 2023. Back then, BTC was $18,150 and the total crypto market cap was $800 billion. Since then, BTC has surged over 300%.

Twice this cycle, a Fear & Greed Index near 30 marked the price bottom. The last time it hit 30, BTC rose from $28k in October 2023 to $74k in March 2024.

What Is Liquid Staking and Why Is It Needed?

For transactions on a blockchain to be processed, a consensus mechanism is required. The two most popular consensus mechanisms are Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Bitcoin uses the former, and Ethereum, Solana and BNB use the latter. Consensus mechanisms ensure network nodes (computers) agree on the blockchain state, valid transactions and block additions, without relying on a central authority.

PoW used by Bitcoin requires miners to solve complex puzzles in order to validate transactions. PoS on the other hand requires validators to “stake” some of the blockchain’s native tokens to gain the right to validate transactions. Validators verify transactions, add blocks to the blockchain, and receive rewards as a result.

A challenge, however, is that validators of the largest PoS blockchain, Ethereum, must stake a minimum of 32 ETH (worth around $52,000). This amount is not feasible for most users and makes staking on Ethereum inaccessible. Hence, platforms like Lido, Rocket Pool, and Tranchess emerged that offered users a service called “liquid staking” so that they can deposit a small amount of ETH in order to gain rewards even if they don’t hold 32 ETH.

Since staking became possible in December 2020, staked ETH has remained locked for over two years. Staked Ether was locked to ensure that the network remains decentralized and secure, even as it transitioned to a new consensus mechanism in 2022 during the Merge. However, this stands in stark contrast to other pools where users can withdraw their staked assets according to their preference. This made Ethereum staking a less-than-ideal option for investors and contributed to the rise of liquid staking to enable liquidity in Ether tokens for their holders.

Here's the Analysis of #BETA :

#BETA is been dropping after the triangle pattern formation and might reach the major support zone of $0.055 - $0.057. Price already broke the resistance around $0.063 - $0.064 which can be used a retest point before dropping. Not enough range so wait for the support.

#BTC formed the double top pattern inside the resistance area and dropping. Nothing much happening just broken minor support area, so just a minor pullback happening and can dump with this weekend.

#VET broke the resistance area making the bullish market structure intact and potentially move higher, if market remain consolidating or moves up.

More selling in the market but its sustaining now

If we look at the ratio between the unrealized profit/loss per coin, we can see that the magnitude of paper gains held is 8.2x larger than paper losses. Only 18% of trading days have recorded a larger relative value, all of which are within Euphoric bull market regimes.

It could be argued that the March ATH set following the approval of the ETFs had several characteristics which are coincident with historical bull market peaks.

What Is a Shard?

To understand what a shard is, we'll need to discuss sharding. Sharding is this database partitioning technique that is considered to be an option by blockchain networks and tested on Ethereum, The more users that a blockchain network gets, the slower the network becomes, and this, in turn, leads to a higher level of latency Sharding attempts to improve the network latency through splitting a blockchain network into separate shards, where each of them has their own data, and are separate from other shards.

Essentially, a shard is a portion of a blockchain network that has been split into multiple shards, which has its own data.

Sharding can be accomplished through the horizontal partitioning of databases through division into rows. Shards are conceptualized based on their characteristics, as one shard can be responsible for storing the state and transaction history of a specific address, for example. It is also possible to divide shards based on the type of digital asset which is stored within them.

Transactions that involve a digital asset can be made possible through a combination of shards. Furthermore, each shard is able to be shared among other shards, and this maintains a key aspect to the blockchain technology, which is the existence of a decentralized ledger. The ledger is still accessible to every user and allows them to view the state of all of the transactions.

When we look at Ethereum, the nodes have to be randomly assigned to a shard, and at a random time, they will get reassigned to another randomly chosen shard. This would in turn make it a lot more difficult for an attacker to end up predicting which shards their malicious node can get assigned to, and as such, a takeover is extremely difficult.

Sharding is a requirement due to the fact that it can make hosting full nodes easier. It is a common practice in computer science when it comes to scaling applications so that they can support a lot more data. When sharding is properly implemented in a blockchain such as Ethereum, each user can store just a part of the history of changes to the database, as opposed to the entire thing, which is how a blockchain works by default.

Here's the Analysis of #ICP :

#ICP is been making lower lows and flipped below the major area of $7.19 - $7.34. Currently, price moving back and forth of the zone and nothing good for buys. Shorting looks good nearly at $7.88. Buys only after $8.00.

Final Batch of #bitcoins sold off from the German Govt. Wallet

Market absorbed the and CMP of #BTC is $57,900

#BITCOIN DAILY TF UPDATE :

#BITCOIN on Daily TF, broke the support and now retesting the resistance as the bearish market structure do. Price rejecting the resistance is not a good scenario to expect. Next week we might see a breakout of the resistance or forming a lower low.

#FTM dropped 34% in profits and printed a new lower low. Price nearly to its next major support area of $0.34 and currently retracing. ON LTF, price forming a Bear Flag, so, kinda bearish sense for now.

Examining the Short-Term Holder (STH) cohort's cost basis and the levels ±1 standard deviation from it. This shows where these price-sensitive holders might react:

- 🔴 Significant unrealized profit indicates an overheated market at $92k.
- 🟠 The break-even level is $64k, with the spot price currently below but trying to reclaim it.
- 🔵 Significant unrealized loss indicates an oversold market at $50k, aligning with the True Market Mean as a bull market break-point.

Only 7% of trading days have recorded prices below the -1SD band, making it relatively rare.