Ethereum Price Analysis High interest and demand

Ethereum (ETH) has essentially moved in lock-step with Bitcoin over the past week. Having retraced over 50%, the cryptocurrency is now recovering. The market cap stands at US$79.2 billion, with US$3.18 billion in trading volume over the last 24 hours.





Research and development of Ethereum's move Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) continues, although it’s currently in the first of many stages. The PoS consensus mechanism, Casper, will consist of two projects that are currently being hybridized; Buterin’s Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG) and Zamfir’s Correct By Construction (CBC).









A nascent form of Casper has been running on the testnet for the past few weeks but has run into several problems with node connections. These issues suggest that Casper may not be ready for the next protocol improvement harfork, Constantinople. However, Casper’s ability to finalize blocks is working as intended. Also in development are Plasma, which addresses smart contract scalability, and Sharding, a type of database partitioning designed to facilitate the growing blockchain size.





The Ethereum network hash rate has continued to march North, despite a decreased block reward from 5ETH to 3ETH. Difficulty is nearing levels not seen since October, when the Byzantine hard fork effecting the block reward change was released. These changes to the are designed to discourage PoW over time, with PoS taking over the network.





While Buterin and his team of developers work on the Ethereum platform, developers that can use it are in high demand. There are currently over 1000 listings for ETH dev positions on the networking site LinkedIn. A study from consensys found that ETH has over 30 times more devs than other blockchain communities.





A leading development focus has been identity management and verification systems for anything from Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML). Although there have been several projects to take up the task, including Vinny Lingham’s Civic which quickly raised $30 million in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), or projects like Sphere which launches mid-2018, a systematic standard for how the problem should be approached has yet to be adopted.





Developer Fabian Vogelsteller aims to change that with ERC725 which targets a unique identity for humans, groups, objects and machines. Vogelsteller was instrumental in developing ERC20, which brought about the explosion of the ICO market, and believes that a shell standard for identity will be equally successful.





The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States, whose research has lead to discoveries such as memory foam, water filters, and scratch-resistant lenses, has also thrown it’s hat in the blockchain ring.





Jin Wei, assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Akron, recently outlined her vision for developing a resilient networking and computing paradigm (RNCP) using the Ethereum blockchain. The RNCP consists of two essential parts, a secure and decentralized computing infrastructure and a data-driven cognitive networking management architecture.

According to Wei, “The RNCP would support decentralized processing among NASA space network nodes in a secure fashion, resulting in a more responsive, resilient scalable network that can integrate current and future networks in a consistent manner. It is expected that the potential is high to contribute to the next generation space networks, and also allow tech transition of these algorithms for commercial systems.”





Decentralized applications, or dapps, also continue to be released and used on the ETH network. The most popular dapps involve collectibles, like cryptokitties, or gameplay and competition, like etherbots, which give users a dopamine rush that some are dubbing ‘crypto crack.’





Many casino and gambling dapps have also been developed. One criticism of the original bitcoin gambling app, Satoshi Dice, were it’s transactions clogging the network. This is less of a problem on Ethereum due to its robust ability to handle these types of microtransactions.





Although scaling and transaction fee problems can plague any blockchain, it’s currently not an issue for ETH, although these pressures ebb and flow with the popularity of ICOs or dapps. This has a compounding effect on the network as a whole, leading to exchanges temporarily halting withdrawals on occasion.





Exchange traded volume has been led by the Bitcoin (BTC), U.S. Dollar (USD), and U.S. Dollar Tether (USDT) markets on Okex, Bitfinex, and Binance respectively.





Bitfinex recently announced the introduction of more ETH trading pairs, further encouraging the use of ETH trading. They are also in the processing of releasing ETHfinex, a platform for trading and discussing ERC20 compatible tokens and ethereum-based crowd sales.



