Ether, Dogecoin Lead Crypto Market Bounce; Lido’s staked ether breaks into the top ten
Ether rallied over 10% in the past 24 hours, trading at 11-month highs above $2,120 during Asian hours. Thursday’s Shapella upgrade ushered in a major development for the Ethereum network, allowing users to deposit and withdraw tokens from the network at will – improving the network’s overall outlook.
Liquid staking protocol tokens made big gains, with Lido’s LDO and Rocket Pool’s RPL rising as much as 14%. Both protocols lock billions of dollars to provide returns on ether stakes to users, who can stake any amount of ether to earn rewards while retaining the liquidity of locked coins through derivative tokens and without setting up the required 32 ether to run a validation node.
Lido’s staked ether tokens (STETH) climbed into the top ten cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of $12 billion, which is the amount of ether locked on the protocol.
Valerie Tetu, head of strategy at Lido Finance, told CoinDesk that the Shappella upgrade likely led to improved trust among users.
“Staking withdrawals enabled by the Shanghai upgrade represent a significant milestone in the evolution of the Ethereum blockchain,” Tetu said over email. “Withdrawals will allow actors to participate in securing the network with more confidence while increasing the capital efficiency of the tokens they decide to allocate.”
“In terms of the staking ecosystem, the ability for users to withdraw their tokens will support healthy competition across platforms and providers, as well as a wider diversity of staking offerings and architectures to flourish,” she added.
Meanwhile, dogecoin (DOGE) rose for the second day in a row. Much of the run-up came when trading service eToro said it would offer crypto trading directly from Elon Musk-owned social media giant Twitter, likely fueling speculation that doge was eventually adopted for use as payments on the platform.
Musk is a vocal dogecoin advocate and has expressed support for the Dogecoin network’s development several times in the past.
Some market observers expect the rally to continue in the coming weeks.
“Many traders had been waiting for the end of the upgrade to start accumulating long positions, therefore neutral news on the US inflation plus deferred demand pushed the ETH price higher today,” Ilya Volkov, co-founder of crypto services platform YouHodler, told CoinDesk in an email -mail.
“ETH remains in the same upward trend channel from the beginning of the year. If the macro situation does not worsen, the current trend is unlikely to change in the near future despite the fact that selling pressure will increase in the coming weeks due to the unlocking of liquidity, Volkov added.
