Ethereum (ETH) has surged above $2,500, now testing a critical supply level that could spark a massive rally for both ETH and altcoins. 

After several days of anxiety and uncertainty, yesterday’s market surge has reignited optimism across the crypto space. Investors and traders are closely watching Ethereum’s price action, as a break above this crucial zone could signal the start of a significant upward trend, potentially setting the stage for an Altseason.

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Top analysts and investors await confirmation that ETH is poised to rally soon. Carl Runefelt, a well-known analyst and investor, has shared his technical analysis on Ethereum, suggesting that the long-awaited rally may be just around the corner. 

According to Runefelt, ETH’s breakout from the current supply zone could lead to a substantial price surge, attracting bullish momentum for Ethereum and a broader range of altcoins. 

The next few days are critical for Ethereum’s price action as the market awaits signals that could define the direction of this potential rally. Investors remain optimistic, anticipating that ETH could lead the market into its next major bullish phase.

Ethereum Testing Crucial Supply

Ethereum has been trading within a bullish triangle formation since early August, and the moment of truth for a potential breakout may be close. 

ETH has underperformed BTC throughout the year, causing many investors and traders to question ETH’s strength during this cycle. This trend led to a shift in confidence as Bitcoin continued to dominate, leaving Ethereum behind. 

However, during yesterday’s market pump, Ethereum showed renewed strength, outperforming Bitcoin for the first time in a while, signaling a possible shift in market dynamics.

Prominent crypto analyst Carl Runefelt recently shared a technical analysis on X, highlighting Ethereum’s imminent breakout from the bullish triangle pattern. 

According to Runefelt, Ethereum is approaching a key moment, and a breakout from this pattern could lead to a major rally. He suggests that once ETH breaks through, the next supply zone to target is around $3,400, representing a significant upward move from current levels.

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This optimistic outlook comes from renewed positive sentiment across the market and Ethereum’s improved price action. Traders and investors are closely watching the next few days, as a successful breakout could mark the beginning of Ethereum’s long-awaited bullish trend and re-establish its strength relative to Bitcoin.

ETH Technical Levels To Watch

Ethereum is trading at $2,611 after a notable 7% surge yesterday. This upward momentum allowed the price to break past the $2,500 mark, a critical resistance level pushing the price down since the beginning of October.

Now, Ethereum is less than 8% away from the 200-day exponential moving average (EMA), currently at $2,806.

For bulls to gain control and establish a sustained uptrend, ETH must reclaim this 200-day EMA and close above the $2,800 level. Doing so would signal a continuation of bullish momentum and set the stage for a potential rally to higher price levels.

On the other hand, if Ethereum fails to hold above the $2,500 support level, a deeper correction may be on the horizon. In that case, the price could return to $2,300, where stronger demand may help stabilize the market.

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The next few days are crucial for Ethereum, as traders and investors are watching closely to see whether the price can hold its recent gains and break through key resistance levels.

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView

• CrossFi launched an EVM-compatible mainnet for scalable web3 payments.
• The network supports 10,000 TPS and bridges Ethereum assets seamlessly.
• Governance uses MPX tokens, with fees averaging $0.02 per transaction.

Cross Finance, commonly known as CrossFi, has announced the launch of its EVM-compatible mainnet, marking a significant step in the evolution of decentralized finance (DeFi) and web3 payment solutions.

The CrossFi blockchain aims to provide a scalable, decentralized ecosystem designed to support high-volume payments and everyday transactions, bridging traditional finance with the world of crypto.

The CrossFi mainnet’s launch comes on the heels of a successful testnet, conducted in collaboration with CoinList, which attracted over one million active wallets.

The CrossFi blockchain

The network’s infrastructure is built using the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, enabling a modular design that supports up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS).

This scalability makes CrossFi suitable for hosting payment applications that require high throughput, similar to Visa-level processing capabilities.

As an EVM-compatible network, CrossFi allows seamless integration with Ethereum-native assets, which can be bridged to its platform and utilized within its payment ecosystem.

Its security is reinforced by PCI DSS certification, a data protection standard recognized by major payment card companies, ensuring that the platform maintains industry-leading data transmission and storage practices.

The governance of the decentralized network is powered by the Mint Power (MPX) token, which is also used to facilitate transaction fees that average $0.02 per transaction.

In addition, the Cross Finance ecosystem features a variety of financial tools, including CrossFi App, which enables services like staking, lending, crypto-fiat exchange, and P2P payments. Users can also leverage CrossFi xAPP for token swaps, cross-chain asset bridging, and liquidity mining.

Further enhancing its ecosystem, CrossFi supports synthetic asset minting, over-collateralized stablecoins, and offers decentralized platforms for trading real-world assets.

By integrating multiple functionalities across its components, Cross Finance is set to democratize access to decentralized finance and facilitate the adoption of blockchain technology in global payments.

The network’s launch partners, including Alchemy and other validators, will play a key role in optimizing performance and maintaining decentralization.

With this mainnet launch, CrossFi is positioned to become a pivotal player in the evolving web3 financial landscape, empowering businesses and users to explore new possibilities in the digital payments space.

In a blog post released on October 14, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined potential future enhancements for the Ethereum protocol, focusing on technical improvements to its proof-of-stake (PoS) system. Titled “Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge,” the post delves into strategies to improve stability, performance, and accessibility while addressing centralization risks.

First, Buterin reflects on Ethereum’s successful transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake aka “The Merge” nearly two years ago, noting that “this proof of stake has performed remarkably well in stability, performance and avoiding centralization risks.” However, he emphasized that “there still remain some important areas in which proof of stake needs to improve.”

Future Enhancements For Ethereum

One of the primary focuses of the post is achieving single slot finality and reducing the minimum staking requirement to democratize participation in the network. Currently, it takes 2-3 epochs (approximately 15 minutes) to finalize a block, and a minimum of 32 ETH is required to become a validator. Buterin highlights the conflict between minimizing the staking requirement, reducing finality time, and minimizing node overhead.

“Today, it takes 2-3 epochs (~15 min) to finalize a block, and 32 ETH is required to be a staker,” he wrote. He identified the goals of finalizing blocks in one slot and allowing validators to stake with as little as 1 ETH. “Poll after poll repeatedly show that the main factor preventing more people from solo staking is the 32 ETH minimum,” Buterin notes.

To address these challenges, he discusses several approaches. One involves implementing better signature aggregation protocols, potentially using zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-SNARKs), to process signatures from millions of validators in each slot. Another approach is the introduction of Orbit Committees, a mechanism where a randomly selected medium-sized committee finalizes the chain while preserving the cost-of-attack properties. “Orbit takes advantage of pre-existing heterogeneity in validator deposit sizes to get as much economic finality as possible, while still giving small validators a proportionate role,” he explains.

Buterin also considers creating a two-tiered staking system with different deposit requirements, where only the higher-deposit tier is directly involved in providing economic finality. He acknowledges that “the risks depend heavily on the specific rights that the lower staking tier gets,” and that certain designs could lead to centralization.

Addressing security vulnerabilities related to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on known validators, Buterin proposes the implementation of Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) protocols. “The best way to fix the DoS issue is to hide the information about which validator is going to produce the next block, at least until the moment when the block is actually produced,” he states.

SSLE protocols use cryptographic techniques to create “blinded” validator IDs, ensuring that only the owner of a blinded ID can generate a valid proof to propose a block without others knowing their identity. However, Buterin acknowledges the challenges: “We highly value Ethereum being a reasonably simple protocol, and we do not want complexity to increase further. SSLE implementations that we’ve seen add hundreds of lines of spec code, and introduce new assumptions in complicated cryptography.”

He also explored methods to reduce Ethereum’s transaction confirmation time from the current 12 seconds to as low as 4 seconds, emphasizing the value of decreasing confirmation times for improving user experience and aiding decentralized Layer 2 solutions. Strategies include reducing slot times and allowing proposers to publish pre-confirmations over the course of a slot. However, Buterin cautions about potential centralization risks and the need for proper incentives, noting that “if we add an attester-proposer separation mechanism, then execution blocks will not need SSLE, because we could rely on block builders being specialized.”

Buterin also touches on additional critical areas, including 51% attack recovery. He suggests that while full automation is impossible, “we can achieve partial automation […] ensuring that the bad guys in an attack at least cannot get a quick clean victory.” He also considers increasing the quorum threshold for block finalization from 67% to 80% to enhance security, arguing that “this seems a much healthier situation than ‘the wrong side’ getting an instant victory.”

Concluding his blog post, Buterin warns of the importance to prepare for the potential threat of quantum computers capable of breaking current cryptographic systems: “This justifies conservatism in the assumptions around performance of proof-of-stake designs, and also is a cause to be more proactive to develop quantum-resistant alternatives.”

At press time, ETH traded at $2,524.

Featured image from Bloomberg, chart from TradingView.com