Ethereum’s [ETH] long-awaited Fusaka upgrade goes live on the 3rd of December.
With the development promising major scalability, cost and throughput improvements, will it light up price action just like the Pectra upgrade did back in May?
A change in how Ethereum operates
The upgrade is being framed as a big move in how quickly the network can ship meaningful change.
Instead of waiting years for sweeping overhauls, Ethereum can now roll out targeted, high-impact improvements on a much shorter cycle.
At the core of this release is EIP-7594, known as PeerDAS, which redesigns how rollup data is handled by letting nodes verify only small samples instead of full data blobs.
The result is lower bandwidth demands and more room for rollup activity. This creates a path toward expanding blob capacity without the need for full hard forks each time.
Will history repeat?
The 58% rally in May was driven largely by market excitement over Pectra, but ETH now faces a very different setup, with recent price action remaining muted.
Although the broader trend has yet to reverse, derivatives data showed a contrast. At press time, the Open Interest (OI) was elevated above $17 billion. The Funding Rate was slightly positive, so traders probably anticipate an upside.
Yet, this optimism appears uncertain – the price chart shows why.
ETH may have found short-term stability near the $3,000 region after its 43% drawdown, but momentum hasn’t meaningfully recovered. RSI showed exhaustion, and the MACD has flattened without confirming a bullish reversal.
This makes the long-standing $7K year-end target (a level many analysts were confident about months ago) far less convincing, as of writing.
For ETH to even attempt such an extension, it would need to reclaim the $3,500-$3,800 resistance range and repeat a strong, trend-driven expansion similar to the Pectra rally.
Right now, the price chart doesn’t rule out upside, but it certainly doesn’t support a parabolic move on its own.
The market wants a follow-through
Recent data from GrowThePie revealed that the network and its L2s achieved a new all-time high of nearly 33,000 TPS, primarily driven by Lighter’s zero-knowledge rollup activity.
Even average daily throughput has climbed meaningfully this year, helped by last week’s gas-limit increase from 45 million to 60 million.
All of this indicates real, measurable progress in scalability, which Fusaka is designed to accelerate. But whether this translates into a sustained price move depends on what happens after the upgrade.
If higher capacity leads to lower fees, more users, and growing rollup demand, ETH could benefit. If not, the network may simply be faster without any market enthusiasm.
Final Thoughts
- Fusaka delivers real scalability gains, but ETH needs network activity to turn that progress into a price rally.
- If post-upgrade usage and fees improve meaningfully, the token may surge.