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For Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s hard fork London is a success in lowering fees and speeding up transactions. The update is welcomed by investors.
It is now done. The update or hard fork of Ethereum, aka London, is operational. And the evolutions are already noticeable. London finally addresses two major issues of the public blockchain.
In particular, it introduces a new mechanism for transaction fees. In concrete terms, EIP-1559 reduces gas fees by burning a portion of them. Thus, about 2.3 ETH are burned every minute.
Applications leveraging the Ethereum blockchain thus see costs decrease, making transactions more interesting for users. OpenSea, a popular NFT marketplace, is the primary beneficiary.
Since London’s rollout, 374 ETH in fees have been burned, representing over $1 million. DEX Uniswap, which was rapidly becoming expensive to trade, also benefits from the mechanism.
Its founder, Hayden Adams, estimates that the exchange could burn up to 350,000 ETH per year, the equivalent of one billion dollars. The Ethereum ecosystem and investors have reason to be satisfied.
In the days leading up to the update, the price of Ether was actually rising rapidly. The price of ETH is now close to 2,800 dollars, up nearly 3% over 24 hours. Over 7 days, the growth exceeds 15%.
Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead is convinced that London is the instrument that will allow Ether to dethrone Bitcoin as the leading cryptocurrency. However, this analysis is not unanimous.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, does not take a position on the matter. For him, it is undeniable that the hard fork represents a major success. Buterin also believes that London will contribute to the success of the merger with Ethereum 2.0 and the migration to proof of stake.
The successful rollout is “proof that the Ethereum ecosystem is capable of making significant changes,” he tells Bloomberg. He also adds that he is “definitely more confident about the merger.”
And he’s clearly not the only one feeling confident. Investors are also cheering for the crypto asset. ETH has seen an impressive 37% rise over the past two weeks. Since the beginning of the year, the growth has reached 280%.