Price of ETH hit its 8-month-high at $1,920 before the Shanghai upgrade.
Tokens of Ethereum staking protocols record the day’s high price gains.
The anticipation of Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade – the simultaneous occurrence of Shanghai and Capella – in a week led to notable 24H price surges in ETH and altcoins related to DeFi staking.
Remarkably, ETH crossed the $1,900 level and hit its 8-month-high of $1,920. It spurred the community’s hype to witness the second-largest cryptocurrency reach $2K.
Ethereum Price Chart (Source: TradingView)
Despite Ethereum’s bullish rally, analysts predict a price drop in ETH after the Shanghai-Capella upgrade due to a sell-off.
ETH-linked DeFi Staking Tokens Surge
Native tokens of DeFi staking protocols on Ethereum have attracted the attention of investors. Prominent tokens such as Lido DAO (LDO), Frax Share (FXS), and Rocket Pool (RPL) exhibited a surge of over 6% in the last 24 hours.
The upcoming Shapella upgrade on April 12 will activate the withdrawals of the staked ETH. According to data from the renowned on-chain analytics firm Nansen, various crypto entities and protocols hold a significant share of ETH staked in the PoS chain. Reportedly, 18.1 million ETH is staked as of now. To highlight, Celsius staked nearly 158,176 ETH on the chain. Furthermore, crypto exchanges such as Binance and Kraken hold nearly 293K ETH and 1.24M ETH respectively.
Moreover, the DeFi staking protocols held top shares too. Lido Finance has 5.6 million ETH, and Frax Finance has 103K ETH staked in the PoS chain.
Other altcoins that record parallel gains are Ripple (XRP) with a 4% spike to $0.515, and Avalanche (AVAX) with a 5.2% spike to $18.23. While the ETH L2 rollup token Arbitrum (ARB) surged 5.81% to reach $1.27. In conclusion, the big picture displayed a bullish market sentiment for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.