Ethereum price (ETH/USD) remains stable ahead of Constantinople hard fork
The Ethereum price (ETH/USD) is showing steady performance ahead of an important network upgrade expected later this week.
The digital currency was one of the biggest winners from the crypto market’s sudden resurgence during yesterday’s afternoon session. Having opened the session at $116.98, Ethereum surged to a four-day high of $130.86 in the late afternoon and eventually finished the day at $129.07.
While the coin saw a slight dip in today’s morning trading, it has managed to defend most of its Monday gains. At the time of writing, the Ethereum price was hovering around $128, according to data from digital currency tracker Coinmarketcap.
All this happens as the Ethereum community is preparing for the highly anticipated Constantinople hard fork, which is expected to take place later this week, at block height 7,080,000. This hard fork will mark an important step toward Ethereum’s transformation from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake protocol. The upgrade will, among other things, delay a scheduled increase of mining difficulty and reduce mining rewards to compensate for the delay. It will also make several changes aimed at making it cheaper to perform certain tasks on the Ethereum network.
Several major cryptocurrency exchanges have already backed the fork, with Coinbase and Kraken being the latest to announce their support.
“Coinbase intends to support the upcoming Constantinople Ethereum (ETH) network upgrade,” the largest US crypto exchange posted yesterday on Twitter.
“Upon commencement of the upgrade, for security and technical purposes, we will temporarily pause sending and receiving ETH across all of our trading platforms until the upgrade completes and we confirm security of the network. The network upgrade will not interfere with buying, selling or trading of ETH on Coinbase Pro, Coinbase.com or mobile apps,” Coinbase further explained in an article on its website.
Meanwhile, Kraken twitted that it expected this to be a “non-contentious fork”, adding that “new coins will be credited to ETH holders as we expect the old chain will quickly become obsolete”.
In today’s trading, the Ethereum price stood at $128.04, as of 13:17 GMT. The digital coin has gained just over 8% in the past 24 hours. Its total market cap currently stands at $13.3 billion.
For further information on how to buy and trade Ethereum, see our comprehensive Ethereum guide.
