The city of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.Ethereum’s Berlin upgrade goes into effect tonight.(Getty Images) Ethereum nears $US2,500 on Berlin upgrade; Dogecoin now a top 10 coin Cryptohead
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The world’s second most popular cryptocurrency has surged to a fresh all-time ahead of tonight’s upgrade to tackle the expensive transaction fees plaguing the network.
Ethereum was trading at $US2,470 ($3,205) this afternoon, even as Bitcoin pulled back slightly from yesterday’s all-time high following Coinbase’s direct listing on the NASDAQ during the overnight hours.
Ether has gained 5.6 per cent in the past 24 hours, 24 per cent in the past week and over 15-fold in the past year.Those who bought Ether at about US30c during its 2014 initial coin offering and still have it are looking at mind-boggling 827,567 per cent gain.
— ATR (37-18) (@ATR2305) April 15, 2021
The gains came as Ethereum prepared to implement the Berlin upgrade, a hard fork scheduled to take place at 8.15pm AEDT that backers hope will solve a major issue for the network.
As the so-called world computer has become more popular, the gas fees that users pay to use transactions has soared, rising from under US10c a year ago to as much as $US40 in February.
Today the average transaction fee is US$18.90 ($24.50), while other proof-of-stake networks such as Cardano and Algorand have negligible fees.“Layer 2 solutions” such as Polygon (MATIC) and Celer Network (Celer) have proliferated that aim to solve Ethereum’s high gas fees by aggregating transactions.
The Berlin upgrade – the first since the Istanbul hard fork back in December 2019 – won’t solve Ethereum’s scaling problems entirely but will change the algorithm used to calculate gas fees, hopefully reducing them somewhat.
After months and months of planning, the Ethereum Berlin upgrade is ready to be deployed today, with multiple improvements to the gas system! 🥳
It’s paving the way for this summer’s London upgrade, which plans to burn some of the fees that would normally be accrued by miners.
— Ethereum World (@worldofethereum) April 14, 2021 2/A key component of the Berlin upgrade is price regulation.The upgrade consists of four EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) that will ensure gas fees are set at a fair price.
— ACCOINTING.com (@accointing) April 13, 2021 Dogecoin up 25%, hits 14c
Overall the cryptocurrency market was mixed, with 48 of the top 100 coins on Coingecko gaining ground and 51 losing it.Coin360
At 3.25pm AEDT, Bitcoin was trading at $US62,876 ($81,775), down 2.4 per cent from 24 hours ago.
Meme/joke coin Dogecoin continued its pump, leapfrogging six cryptocurrencies in the past four days to become a top 10 coin by market capitalisation.
Dogecoin was trading at US14c, up 25 per cent from yesterday and up from US0.8c in late January.
It is up 126 per cent in the past seven days, making it the best-performing top 100 coin in that period.
Me at work telling people a dog currency will make me a millionaire #dogecoin pic.twitter.com/QPdVQUQSpP
— Cross Examine Nation (@xExamineNation) April 15, 2021
Uniswap, the eighth-most valuable crypto, had also set a new all-time high, while the rest of the top 10 had declined.
The other top 100 coins setting new peaks were Nexo , Cosmos (ATOM), VeChain , Chainlink , LEO Token , cETH and XDC .
Status (SNT) was the best gainer in the top 100, adding 27.9 per cent..
