Ethereum: Stakers continue to show faith in ETH despite price fluctuations

• ETH’s value declined by more than 11% in the last 30 days.
• The supply locked in staking smart contract continued to hit new peaks.

The month of August made Ethereum [ETH] shed all of its gains that it had been holding for more than a month. The king of alts fell steeply from its mid-$1800 level two weeks ago and has since wiggled in the $1600 range.

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Network profitability dips

At the time of writing, ETH exchanged hands at $1,649, marking a decline of more than 11% in the last 30 days, per CoinMarketCap

According to a recent Glassnode update, around 55.42% of all ETH addresses were profitable, the lowest in the last seven months.

The degree of profitability could also be examined by looking at the Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) indicator. It is basically the difference between unrealized profit and unrealized loss and gauges whether the network as a whole is in a state of profit or loss.

Although the positive value confirmed that the network was in net profit, the level of profitability dropped many notches. As shown in the graph, the NUPL drifted lower to 0.032, from 0.13 before the price correction.

Source: Glassnode

Staking goes on undeterred

Interestingly, the bearish price trajectory couldn’t dent the excitement of ETH stakers. Unfazed by the ebbs and flows of the market, the supply locked in Ethereum’s staking smart contract continued to hit new peaks.

As per the latest update, more than 28 million ETH have been staked with the network. This equated to about 23% of Ethereum’s total circulating supply.

The huge increase in staking also demonstrated investors’ faith in the mechanism, which was absent before the Shapella upgrade. Since the execution of the hard fork, ETH’s staked supply rose by more than 50%.

Read Ethereum’s [ETH] Price Prediction 2023-24

The rise in staking came alongside a steady increase in overall ETH adoption. The count of addresses holding a positive number of ETH tokens neared 105 million, marking a robust growth trajectory since its launch nearly eight years ago.

While it cannot be stated with certainty, more people purchased ETH with the goal to stake rather than trade. This is because ETH trading volumes have trended downwards in recent months.

Source: Glassnode