Ethereum, the world’s largest altcoin, has been busy prepping for the much-anticipated Merge because it showcased vital indicators. Nevertheless, the principle query is the timeline. The Ethereum mainnet is slated to merge with the Beacon Chain, however the delay has fueled loads of questions too.
Alternative price
Ethereum’s reputation has hiked through the years. So has the price of doing enterprise on the community – Fuel charges, the quantity of gwei charged per transaction. Fuel charge has steadily risen, regardless of there being declining tendencies occasionally.
Nevertheless, this state of affairs modified as Ethereum’s common gasoline charges got here right down to 0.0015 ETH. The typical gasoline charge tapped a brand new low on 2 July – A stage unseen in 19 months or since November 2020.

Supply: Bitinfocharts
The aforementioned graph marks a big drop in transaction charge for the altcoin. Contemplate this – Beginning in January 2021, Ethereum’s gasoline charges surged owing to the hype round non-fungible tokens (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi). That’s not the case anymore.
Such a decline within the charge construction injects two potential eventualities. The apparent one – It could carry some aid to buyers/merchants/ETH holders who’ve confronted or moderately incurred immense charges.
Quite the opposite, right here’s one other grieving state of affairs – In keeping with DeFi Llama, DeFi dominance of the ETH blockchain is waning.
Another excuse could possibly be the decline in NFT gross sales. The NFT ecosystem recorded its worst efficiency of the yr in June 2022 as the entire variety of every day gross sales fell right down to roughly 19,000 with an estimated worth of $13.8 million — A quantity which was recorded again in June 2021. Furthermore, ETH’s community issue painted the identical image as effectively.
Moreover, ETH’s transaction depend additionally decreased sharply and hit its lowest stage over the previous yr.

Supply: CryptoQuant
After hitting an all-time excessive in November 2021, the metric has barely seen any sunshine. As could be evidenced from the previous, value uptrends stay related to an growing variety of transactions. Sadly, this isn’t the case right here.
Down south to north
The upcoming Merge could be the saving grace right here. The whole worth locked in ETH 2.0 deposit contract continues to document new all-time highs. As of three July, the most recent stats had recorded a powerful determine.
The variety of staking ETH 2.0 deposit contract addresses reached 12,992,901. Moreover, the staking charge surpassed the 11% mark.

Supply: oklink
This implies greater than 11% of the ETH at present in circulation is deposited in ETH2.
General, ETH has integrated or proven indicators of the upcoming Merge. That being stated, the delay right here has fueled some vital bearish narratives.