Cody McGrath 
During the crypto market crash, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum has come under significant pressure.
Despite the Ropsten testnet Merge upgrade’s success, the Ethereum (ETH) price has remained stable.
On the other hand, on-chain address activity isn’t supporting a price increase. According to Santiment data, Ethereum address activity and network growth have reached two-year lows. Santiment reports:
“As #Ethereum crept back above $1,800 once again a few minutes ago, we’re monitoring long-term fundamentals that would signal a turnaround for the #2 asset in #crypto. $ETH is still seeing very low levels of new addresses, the lowest in over 2 years.”
On the other hand, it appears that there is a conflict between the crypto non-exchange whales and exchange whales. However, non-exchange whales in ETH appear to be taking a marginal lead, with three times the coins held by exchange whales. Santiment reports:
“Ethereum’s top 10 non-exchange vs. exchange addresses are maintaining a high ratio of $ETH owned over the top 10 non-exchange whales. With a tremendous 3.4x more coins held, there still appears to be a belief that prices can stabilize.”
While the price of ETH continues to fall, the Ethereum blockchain is experiencing some positive fundamental developments. Earlier on Wednesday, June 8, the cry
pro core developers completed The Merge upgrade on the Ropstent testnet successfully.
As a result, the Ethereum development team will now move forward with plans to implement the same upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet by August 2022. The Merge upgrade is critical to the successful transition of the crypto to the Proof-of-Stake Ethereum blockchain.
The upgrade will significantly improve the Ethereum blockchain’s network efficiency and scalability. We can anticipate a smooth transition to the PoS network in the coming months. It will also aid in increasing DeFi activity on the platform.