In the last 24 hours, ETH has surged more than 25%, after it's quiet showing in the last few weeks. ETH was constantly being tested for the low prices of $82 to $85 and suddenly in one day, surged from $89 to $114. I know many of you are either now popping champagnes from your gains or crying under a pillow because you missed out on this bull run. But let's take a step back and ask the golden question: What is causing this huge surge?

There are actually many things currently happening for ETH and the upcoming events are causing a lot of speculation. All it takes is a sudden incremental increase in sentiment and this surge all makes sense. Here are a list of either upcoming or past events affecting Ethereum:

Events:

1) Ethereum India Summit Mumbai

The most recent event that just ended was the Ethereum India Summit Mumbai on May 18th.



This event featured Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, introducing Ethereum for Enterprises as well as a general introduction to the Blockchain.

2) Coindesk Blockchain Technology Summit



This is the third annual Coindesk Summit and the guest list is quite jaw dropping. This might be on of the main reasons there is such a huge momentum for Ethereum's surge right now.

Many anticipated topics will be featured at this summit, such as whether or not Bitcoin can scale which has been a controversial topic for many years. Another interesting topic that will be discussed is Ethereum Enterprise Alliance. The EEA is a collection of companies that will develop blockchain technology and use the Ethereum blockchain for their business.

3) Ethereal Summit 2017

The Ethereal Summit is happening today, May 19th. It features many influential speakers in the blockchain industry to talk about the future of blockchain and what it has in store for us. The concluding speaker of this event will be Joseph Lubin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum to talk about "Ethereum, Taking Back Control Of the Internet." I'm sure many people will be interested in this topic given Ethereum's surge.

4) Metropolis

Aside from Casper (Proof of Stake) Implementation for Ethereum, the biggest fork that will be happening this year will be Metropolis. It is set to happen anywhere in the next 1-2 months. The Metropolis fork is essentially the implementation of about 10 EIP's (Ethereum Improvement Proposals). These improvements will bring forth upgrades in terms of scalability, privacy and security. One exciting update is Ethereum's implemention of zk-SNARKS, Zcash's zero-knowledge proof system. If you haven't already, I encourage all of you to read up on what it is and what impacts it can make to the Ethereum blockchain. You can also see the progress and details of all EIP's at the Ethereum's github (see below link).

Github EIP: https://github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum/milestone/10

5) Raiden

Another update that we are all looking forward to is Raiden, the lightning network of Ethereum. If you aren't familiar, the lightning network was first proposed by Bitcoin to solve it's scalability issues. Recently, it has been successfully tested by Litecoin right after it's Segregation Witness update. Raiden should be coming sometime very soon this year, the progress of it can also be seen at their github. Currently, Raiden is 83% complete.



Raiden Progress: https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/milestones

To sum things up, Ethereum has many great things happening in the upcoming months and it is not a surprise that the price is surging this much. If you are still crying under your pillow because you think you missed out, it is still not too late to invest. I am personally an Ethereum believer and it probably has one of the best core teams in the blockchain industry. So gear up, this year will be a huge year for Ethereum!