The Dencun Ethereum upgrade went live on Wednesday. After Dencun launched, the price of ETH slumped 3.2% from $4,076 to $3,949, according to CoinGecko data.
It has largely recovered since, however, peeking back above $4,000 at time of writing.
Each upgrade is intended to improve the Ethereum blockchain, including lowering fees and improving transaction speed—which leads to greater value in the long run.
"Dencun will not only reduce fees to facilitate more trades and investing but also open the door for competitive peer-to-peer and commerce payments," Beam Wallet CEO Andy Bromberg told Decrypt in an email. "On top of that, product maturation will make it easier for people to get into crypto and send payments. We didn't have that in the last bull run, but this time, we're set to capture the momentum for real use cases."
Here are some of the important recent updates to Ethereum and how the market reacted before and after each upgrade.
The benefits are material with the #Ethereum Dencun upgrade 🫡 (h/t @gelatonetwork @mlphresearch) pic.twitter.com/vcZulnYZFG
— Chris Burniske (@cburniske) March 13, 2024
In the week leading up to the highly anticipated “Merge,” which transitioned Ethereum from a Proof of Work to a Proof of Stake algorithm, Ethereum traded above $1,700, with a high of $1,779 on September 11, 2022. On September 15, the day of the “Merge,” Ethereum started the day trading at $1,635, falling 11% to $1,472 and steadily declining in the days that followed. By the end of September, Ethereum was $1,329.
The prior upgrade, Grey Glacier, took place on June 30, 2022; Ethereum saw a slight decrease of 3.8% from $1,098 to $1,057.
However, internal milestones don't always lead to a decline in ETH value.
Leading up to the London upgrade in August 2021, Ethereum traded at $2724 on August 4, rising to $2821 on August 5 when the upgrade happened and rising again 11.7% to $3151 by August 7.
In April 2021, before the Ethereum Berlin upgrade, Ethereum traded at $2429 on April 14. The price of Ethereum rose 3.5% to $2,514 on April 15, the day of the upgrade.
Ethereum slumped after this week’s Dencun upgrade went live, although the number one proof-of-stake blockchain appeared to regain its footing later in the day.
“The common phrase is that bull markets climb a wall of worry,” Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy, previously told Decrypt.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.