For those familiar with the term “cryptocurrencies”, there is a high chance they are well aware of Ethereum.
Ethereum was founded back in 2015 and although it is not as old as Bitcoin, it has earned the same amount of respect and recognition as Bitcoin.
The main reason behind Bitcoin’s vast success and the largest dominance in the crypto industry is because it was the first crypto that started it all.
People had already grown used to Bitcoin before they were introduced to any new cryptocurrencies. It was after two years of Bitcoin being launched when the second crypto (Litecoin) was launched in 2011.
By then, Bitcoin was already quite popular and it had started gaining mainstream attention. However, Bitcoin did not have much to offer other than mining and the power to sell and purchase the asset.
Ethereum Introduced a New World
As the Ethereum network was launched, it became a headliner in the crypto news for the features and services it was capable of offering.
Founded by Vitalik Buterin alongside other founders, the Ethereum Network so much not only to the crypto users but also the developers.
Through the network, the users had the ability to mine, trade, buy, and sell the Ethereum network’s native token “Ether – ETH”.
However, the Ethereum network offered developers the ability to create and launch their own decentralized applications. They were also able to launch their own crypto tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
This was something that had never been offered by any other blockchain and it set the crypto-blockchain industry on a different path.
Ethereum has Gained Huge Success
From the year 2015 until now, the Ethereum network has continued gaining huge success and adoption throughout the crypto-verse.
The Ether price has also continued surging alongside Bitcoin and as per the stats, it has gained more than Bitcoin in the year 2022.
It was on November 16 when the trading price of ETH had hit an all-time high of $4,891.70. There were several speculations that Ether would surpass Bitcoin in terms of market attention and valuation.
Things Have Gone South
Unfortunately, the situation has turned bad for Ether in the year 2022. It is based on several negative factors where the first one is the macroeconomic downfall.
Due to the economic pressure, the investors have been forced to invest less into cryptocurrencies and worry more about their basic necessities.
There is also a growing fear among the investors due to the happenings in the cryptocurrency market, witnessed in the year 2022.
In the year 2022, the crypto market has suffered two major crashes, the FTX and the Terra network collapses. Both have caused a great amount of damage to the entire industry.
While the entire crypto industry has these negative factors pulling their values down, Ether has another major negative factor to worry about.
A Solution has become the Problem
According to the market experts, the cryptocurrency market may soon recover from the mentioned crashes. Unfortunately, the third and the unique negative factor that only Ether has is going to haunt the network.
For Ether, the third negative factor is none other than its September 2022 upgrade “The Merge”. For almost two years, the Ethereum network developers bolstered the development of the Merge.
They claimed that the Merge would be the ultimate solution to the scalability, latency, and the high gas fees problems.
The entire Ethereum community highly anticipated the Merge thinking it would be the solution to all the problems faced on the network.
However, the development team behind the Merge, commonly calling it Eth 2.0 shared one alarming detail of the upgrade. They revealed that the upgrade would move ETH from the PoW protocol to the PoS protocol.
After the Merge’s implementation, Ethereum has been facing a troublesome time. It can no longer be mined, which has caused the network to lose its entire mining community.
The investors are also losing their interest in the asset as it has become an investment asset for the corporates. Although Bitcoin has a bright future in the upcoming years, ETH’s stars may not shine in the same manner.