Crypto analytics platform Santiment says that three altcoins are showing signs of potentially reversing course after a bearish run.

Santiment says that whale activity is on the rise for decentralized exchange protocol dYdX (DYDX), data exchange platform Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) and crypto payments network Request (REQ).

According to Santiment, the rise in whale activity signals that a turnaround becomes much more likely after a period of price declines.

DYDX is trading at $1.85 at time of writing while OCEAN is changing hands at $0.286. REQ is priced at $0.081 at time of writing.

Turning to Ethereum (ETH), Santiment says that the largest exchange and non-exchange wallets are loading up on the second-largest crypto by market cap. The analytics firm notes that the 10 largest non-exchange wallets own $61.1 billion worth of Ethereum a new all-time high.

Meanwhile, the 10 largest exchange wallets control $10.9 billion worth of ETH.

Ethereums top 10 non-exchange and top 10 exchange addresses continue getting richer as its market value hovers just above $1,570. 8.51% of ETH currently sits on exchanges, and the 10 largest wallets away from exchanges hold a whopping 39.22 million of them.

Santiment also says that Ethereum is seeing an uptick in the social dominance metric as the rate ETH is being discussed on social media platforms is at the highest level in about a month.

According to Santiment, old Ethereum coins are also moving at the highest rate in a month as interest from traders remains high.

Ethereum is trading at $1,550 at time of writing.

Generated Image: Midjourney

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Rising Whale Activity on These Three Ethereum-Based Altcoins a Sign of Potential Bullish Turnaround: Santiment - The Daily Hodl

It was not too long ago that the key concern regarding Ethereums future was the desperate need for it to scale. High network activity and subsequent gas costs spawned an explosion of layer-2 solutions.

Thus, the most recent developments on Ethereum have been focused on infrastructure and how to reduce the load on the once heavily burdened network. Now, it finally seems to be ready for prime time.

But where did all the traffic go?

The argument was always, well, if you increase throughput by a hundred X, which has happened, then you should increase transactions by a hundred X, but that hasnt happened, says the head of digital asset trading at GoldenTree, Avi Felman.

On the 1000x podcast (Spotify/Apple), Felman says, youve just moved all the transactions from ether (ETH) to Arbitrum, and youve barely increased the overall amount of transactions that are occurring.

Everyone was kind of expecting it to look good on a deflationary basis, Felman says, but thats just not going to be the case as long as activity is mostly on Base, or mostly on Arbitrum or mostly on Optimism.

Goldman Sachs executive director Jonah Van Bourg compares his expectations for Ethereums scaling solutions to the constant addition of freeway lanes in California. Every time they add a new lane, it just brings more cars onto the freeway.

I thought the same thing would happen to ETH, he says, but instead its looking more like the network of pipelines in the Permian Basin in Texas.

Sometimes theres just too much oil, he says. Everythings bottlenecked. So then theres this frenzy of pipeline building, which is effectively a scaling solution for an oil field. And then suddenly theres just way too much pipeline capacity and not enough oil.

Van Bourg explains that scaling solutions were overbuilt during a period of particularly high demand in Ethereums history. Now, capacity is much greater than demand, Van Bourg says, so gas prices are just forced into the toilet.

Read more: Ethereum blockspace on track for first unprofitable month since the Merge

Van Bourg expects the pendulum to swing back the other way hard one day when people realize, he says, we have this thing thats cheaper and better than AWS for our use case and probably more permanent.

But that might be a year off, or six months off, or two years off, who knows.

Van Bourg notes that negative sentiment regarding Ethereum on crypto Twitter might pressure holders to think short term. You read tweets where people who have been ETH-bullish for five years are just like, Its over. Never buying this crap again.

You look at your ETH and you look at these tweets and youre probably saying to yourself, Crap, Im going to get out.

Remind yourself, he says, that in 12 or 18 or 24 months when this thing is gassing higher and its trading $5,000 a token, those very same people will be talking about how ETH is the future, how its going to $50,000 a token, how theyve been long all the way up.

Its a gradient of outcomes, he says. Its not black and white. ETH is not over. ETH is not the future. Its this constantly evolving shade of gray.

You have to filter out the noise.

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Ethereum's scaling infrastructure is better than ever. So where's all the traffic? - Blockworks

Lido Finance, the leading liquid staking protocol, faces a minimum penalty of 20 Ethereum before it can withdraw its ETH from validators that were slashed.

On Wednesday, 20 validators associated with Launchnodes, one of Lidos node operators, got slashed from the Ethereum network, recording the largest number of validators slashed within a day this year.

According to an update by Lido, the initial loss to the protocol is around 20 ETH with additional penalties to be believed for inactivity before exiting the network.

Slashing is the process by which validators are forcibly removed from a proof-of-stake network for failing to fulfill their validator responsibilities properly, such as prolonged downtime.

It also involves a slashing penalty of 1/32 ETH for a maximum of 1 ETH per slashed validator that is deducted and burnt immediately. It can be followed by additional penalties.

These penalties are charged over the next 36 days before the validator can withdraw their staked amount, per Ethereum.org. Currently, a validator exit is only possible after November 17.

Launchnodes notified that the problem occurred because of infrastructure and web3 signer configuration issues.

The node operator told Decrypt that "all of Launchnodes' infrastructure is back up and fully operational, and Lido has been reimbursed in full for all losses incurred to date, ensuring that no stETH holder has suffered any loss."

Lido Finance did not immediately respond to Decrypts request for comment.

During the last major slashing event, when 12 validators were slashed at once on August 26, the loss in penalties to each validator was less than 1.10 ETH.

In response to such events, the Lido team also highlighted that the protocol has built a reserve cover fund of approximately 6,200 ETH to help mitigate the slashing impact.

The team is waiting to determine the extent of the losses, which it said cannot be known ahead of time.

The community will later decide whether the Lido DAO cover fund should compensate affected holders.

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Lido Finance Faces Slashing Penalty of More Than $30,000 in Ethereum - Decrypt

As equity markets benefit from a bounce-back year in 2023, so too has the crypto market.

Ethereum (ETH -0.29%) has climbed almost 30% this year, after it dropped 68% in 2022. But with it still being down significantly from its peak, some enthusiasts are hoping for huge returns in the years ahead.

As of this writing, Ethereum's price is sitting at about $1,500. For it to reach the $5,000 mark, that would translate to a gain of about 230%. Is this even a possible scenario? Let's take a closer look at this top digital asset.

Ethereum's all-time high price was about $4,892, which was set in November 2021. At that point, the token's price skyrocketed 153,000% from its initial launch date in mid-2015. Some lucky early adopters got rich.

But it's worth pointing out that this huge price run-up happened during a major bull market in both the equity markets and the cryptocurrency industry. Monetary policy was still loose after the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since then, it's been a difficult ride for investors. Ethereum is currently 68% below its peak price. The so-called "crypto winter" was in full effect after a string of companies in the industry failing. Rapidly rising interest rates have also pressured riskier assets.

While impossible to predict, investors can't ignore macroeconomic factors. They can both positively and negatively influence Ethereum's price action.

Without a doubt, Ethereum has huge potential, according to the most supportive bulls.

Thanks to the added functionality and programmability of smart contracts, Ethereum is trying to become the world's decentralized computing platform. This blockchain innovation allows for two parties to transact for different use cases without the need for an intermediary. If it gains broader adoption, industries known for having expensive intermediaries are prone to disruption.

So far, the use cases have included various decentralized applications like financial protocols and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). While activity here has cooled off, developers continue working on trying to make the network better. According to a report by venture firm Electric Capital, Ethereum has 1,901 active developers working on it, significantly more than any other cryptocurrency. This bodes well for its ability to introduce advancements.

Speaking more to the development aspect, Ethereum's Merge upgrade is what many consider to be a positive step, particularly as it relates to scalability. Ethereum can only process 11 transactions per second, and when demand is high, transaction fees can soar.

The Merge transitioned Ethereum to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system, which can lower energy expenditures and set it up for further scaling enhancements. Future upgrades could add more capabilities to Ethereum. And in turn, this could drive usage and demand for the token, causing its price to rise.

As is the case with any unproven asset or new technology, there is a ton of uncertainty around the ultimate outcome.

With any cryptocurrency, there's always inherent technical risk. What happens if there's a bug in the software code that exposes private keys? Then everyone's crypto holdings can be stolen.

In Ethereum's case, its complex development roadmap introduces the possibility of errors to being made. This means its technical risks are even higher compared to a simpler and more straightforward crypto like Bitcoin.

One of the biggest bear arguments for Ethereum is that it's becoming more centralized, which goes against the entire premise of cryptocurrencies as tools for decentralization and giving power back to the users. The PoS consensus mechanism leads to larger pools of token holders controlling the processing of transactions.

Moreover, a single person, co-founder Vitalik Buterin, has major influence over the direction of Ethereum. He can make decisions to his benefit at the expense of the average Ethereum user. And this can be a detriment to the integrity of the network.

Ethereum has promise, but the uncertainty remains sky-high. So I think investors hoping for the token to reach $5,000 should temper expectations. Unless wild enthusiasm takes over the crypto market again, that's a very lofty price target to set your eyes on

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Can Ethereum Reach $5,000? - The Motley Fool

Ethereums once-crowded queue for new validators on the blockchain has almost completely cleared out.

It would be the first time that has happened since Ethereums major Shapella upgrade in April, which marked the completion of the blockchains transition to a fully-functioning proof-of-stake network.

Blockchain data shows that there are now just 598 validators waiting to go onto the network, down from a peak of over 96,000 in early June.

The shrinking queue means that the expected waiting time to add a new validator to the network shrunk to less than five hours as of Thursday. This is a remarkable decrease from when new validators were looking at a 45-day wait due to massive pent-up demand to stake ether (ETH), the networks native token.

Ethereums rules limit how many new validators can come on every blockchain epoch, or roughly 12 seconds.

Validators participate in maintaining Ethereums proof-of-stake blockchain and verifying transactions by locking up (staking) ETH. In exchange for their efforts, they receive staking rewards.

Ethereums Shapella upgrade allowed withdrawal of staked ETH for the first time, eliminating a significant source of risk for investors that they might not be able to get their funds back out.

The upgrade unleashed a wave of inflows into the blockchains staking mechanism.

ETH staking growth was exceptionally strong since the Merge when Ethereum transitioned to proof-of-stake in September 2022 and Shapella upgrades, but the initial fervor has started to cool, David Lawant, head of research at institutional crypto exchange FalconX, noted in a market report.

An empty activation queue implies a slowdown in the growth of staked ETH, Lawant said.

Staking rewards have dropped significantly to near 3.5% from 5%-6% earlier this year, according to CoinDesks Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR), due to tepid network activity to generate revenue from fees and the increasing number of stakers. Meanwhile, short-term U.S. Treasury yields have surpassed 5% as the Federal Reserve jacked up interest rates to combat inflation.

Ethereums staking ratio the share of tokens staked in the network versus total supply has grown over 22% from 15% in this April and 6.5% last September, but still lags behind other popular proof-of-stake networks. The same ratio for Solana (SOL) is 69%, while its 63% for Cardano (ADA) and 53% for Avalanche (AVAX).

This is largely due to ETH being used as a network resource, and because Ethereum possesses a more distributed shareholder base, Lawant said.

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Ethereum Has Nearly Cleared Out Validator Queue, a Sign of Weak Staking Demand - CoinDesk