Ethereum has long been the TOP-2 cryptocurrency, but what will happen next? Indeed, today the price is 90% lower than the historical maximum. The development team, led by Vitalik Buterin, continues to follow the path to Ethereum 2.0, but the current network updates have not affected the cost increase for a long time.
In this article, we will look at how the recent Istanbul hard fork helped us move to the global Ethereum 2.0 computer.
When to wait for a global platform update with sharding and POS mining. What will be the fate of ordinary miners and how will we get the ether after switching to the POS algorithm.
And the most important question: when we see the native ETH and what will its price be at the peak, the Ethereum logarithmic forecast.
Hard fork istanbul
What can be said for updating the air of Istanbul, which went well? But no, this time, however alarming everything was at the very beginning, the update itself was surprisingly smooth.
Hard fork was held on December 8 at block # 9,069,000, as Vitalik Buterin personally reported:
And despite the fact that before the update itself, the preparation of nodes was less than 50%, no continuous separation into two or more blockchains occurred.
And if we look at the state of the Ethereum blockchain today, then Ethereum transactions quite expectedly dipped during the network update, but then returned to normal:
Transaction fees are within adequate limits:
Also at the time of this writing, almost 97% of the air nodes supported the Istanbul update:
It remains only to congratulate Buterin and the company on the successful implementation of a hard fork, and not like last times with the previous Constantinople update.
But let's not recall the sad, but let's look at how the Istanbul update helped us all get closer to the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0.
Ethereum 2.0
Instant and practically free transactions due to Proof-of-Stake and sharding. This is what Vitalik Buterin and the entire Ethereum team promise us, however, this has not been done for the first year, and while progress in this direction is rather foggy.
Let's see, due to the update of Istanbul, the Ethereum blockchain got compatibility with the Zcash cryptocurrency in order to further use zero-disclosure proof technology. Also, a number of updates were made to improve the network in terms of reducing transaction costs for users and smart contracts, but scripts that clog the network, on the contrary, will receive increased commissions.
In particular, they can implement the ProgPoW mining algorithm, which will make the ether stable for mining using ASIC miners.
All this is good and we are not going to argue with the developers, but where is Proof-of-Stake, Casper, sharding and all that Vitalik Buterin presented to us under the beautiful name Serenity?
The past and next hard fork is only a preparatory stage, as evidenced by the roadmap for the global update of the Ethereum blockchain. Although even her, judging by recent events, it is already necessary to correct:
We know for sure that there is a test network for Ethereum 2.0, and everyone can enjoy its work in a special block browser. But it is also not a near-promised world computer by Buterin, and the air developers are not going to force events.
The first updates that will affect really key technologies, such as sharding or Proof-of-Stake mining, we are unlikely to see before the end of 2020. But we believe that they will last until 2021.
And one cannot say that this is bad, because no one has yet made such a cardinal transition from proof of work to proof of ownership. It is very important to prevent fatal errors so that the network simply does not break. In addition, as the cryptocurrency market and the popularity of decentralized applications show us, you should not expect a boom before 2021.
So for now, the network will work the old fashioned way, and this should please the miners.
Ethereum mining
Immediately after updating Istanbul, developers must conduct another mini-hard fork and roll back the "complexity bomb".
This is such a thing in the ether code that slows down mining exponentially and if you do nothing with it, then the blockchain will simply stop.
The “complexity bomb” was specially introduced into the code to encourage developers to create a new generation platform, but it only works much faster than Buterin and the company. And so there is the so-called plan B, whenever whenever the "complexity bomb" is turned on, it is simply rolled back by another hard fork. This is such an original deadline, which, if desired, can be carried on later to infinity.
So, we found out that practically nothing is threatening the air miners in the coming year and the developers will take care of the normal operation of the network. But then the adventures begin, because they plan to significantly cut the block reward, moreover, after all the updates are completed, the current broadcast network with classic mining will at best remain as an auxiliary layer, at worst it will be completely stopped.
In the future, ether miners will be those who have at least 32 ETH on their accounts, at the current exchange rate it is approximately $ 4,700. Note that other cryptocurrencies using the Proof-of-Stake algorithm have a significantly higher entry threshold, but even this amount is far from suitable for everyone .
Even Vitalik Buterin is already worried that there will not be so many private miners, and network management will go to the whales and exchanges, which have no problems with the amount of ether on their wallets.
Price ETH
Benjamin Cowen, a trader and youtuber, will help us with the forecast on the air. Let's analyze his forecast for Ethereum, based on pure mathematics.
So, Benjamin Cowen identified several cycles of the Ethereum exchange rate, calculated the coefficients and tried to forecast the next maximum and minimum prices.
According to his method, Buterin's cryptocurrency has three bottoms: $ 0.44, $ 7, and $ 83. As well as two highs: $ 14 and $ 1,458.
And here a problem arises, because this data is not enough for a complete calculation and a number of assumptions will have to be made. So, the next bottom of the ether in 2023 should be approximately $ 882, but its native is expected in 2022 and the price will be from $ 9,000 to $ 46,000 dollars.
You understand that neither a video from Benjamin, nor our article is a financial recommendation, but we are personally ready to believe in the realism of this scenario. If two factors coincide, namely, a new Bitcoin price record in 2022 and the completion of work on Ethereum 2.0, then a forecast of $ 9,000 or $ 15,000 is quite likely.
Well, if airtime becomes not just a fast platform, it also offers us decentralized applications for mass use, and Bitcoin will please immodest $ 100,000, and, for example, shoot up to $ 500,000, then $ 46,000 for airtime may turn out to be real, albeit for a very short period of time.