Ethereum Watch

• Ethereum surpassed Cardano and Polkadot in developers’ count. 
• Traders are taking ETH positions before the Shapella update.

Ahead of the 12 April completion of the Shanghai upgrade, Ethereum [ETH] has taken the mantle as the blockchain with the most active developers in the Layer one (L1) and Layer Two (L2) ecosystems.

Recall that projects like Polkadot [DOT], and Cardano [ADA] were mostly at the crest of this activity for the last few months.

Realistic or not, here’s ETH’s market cap in BTC terms

The active developers metric, as measured by Token Terminal, tracks the number of GitHub developers engaged in polishing the features of a project.

According to the blockchain data and dApp aggregator, Ethereum had 199 developers, while Polkaodt could only register 172 in second place.

Apart from the top two, L2 projects including the ones getting hyped as Polygon [MATIC], and Arbitrum [ARB] improved in this regard. However, they remained far behind Ethereum. Meanwhile, as Ethereum ramps up preparations to enable staked Ether [stETH] withdrawal, traders seem to get involved in taking ETH positions. 

Not a question of “Options”

According to Glassnode, the options Open Interest (OI) across all exchanges had been increasing since 24 March. The options OI reveals the total amount of funds dedicated to opening options contracts.

And, at press time, the metric was $7.56 billion. This indicated that traders are increasingly forecasting which direction ETH will head given the blockchain’s forthcoming upgrade.

Furthermore, the Ethereum fear and greed index was 61 out of a possible 100, at the time of writing. The indicator uses price volatility, market volume, and social trend data to assess if an asset is at a fair price.

Ethereum Fear and Greed Index is 61 – Greed
Current price: $1,792https://t.co/w9g6chjUEShttps://t.co/9mfbj9d3uH pic.twitter.com/4be0oO6UxM

— Ethereum Fear and Greed Index (@EthereumFear) March 31, 2023

So, the current condition implies that market mentions do not see a buying opportunity. Similarly, the sentiment does not expect a notable correction in the short term.

However, institutions who trade Over The Counter (OTC) contracts seem not to share the same perceptions with the overall derivatives market. According to the CME Group, ETH’s futures OI was down to 4,246 while the volume increased to 5,103 ETH.

How much are 1,10,100 ETHs worth today?

The goal is to keep providing

Either way, predicting ETH’s price action around developments like this remains a dicey decision. In times past like the year of the Merge, several long positions were open. But unfortunately, most liquidated as the ETH price plunged.

Moreover, the number of ETH 2.0 deposit contracts by staking providers had reached new peaks via different networks and exchanges. And, as expected Lido Finance [LDO] edged out every other protocol while Binance dominated exchange activity. 

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