TLDR:

Ethereum price breaks above $2.63K as whale activity rises, and non-empty wallets reach a record 207.17M.
More than 40M ETH is staked, while Ethereum DeFi holds roughly $50B in total value locked across markets.
Analysts spot $2,800 and higher levels ahead, but those targets depend on resistance holding or breaking.
Ethereum’s wallet, staking, and DeFi growth adds utility beyond simple price speculation for holders now.

The Ethereum price climbed above $2.63K on Friday, reaching its highest level since January. Santiment reported rising whale transactions as ETH pushed higher.

The move coincides with record network participation and stronger on-chain activity. Ethereum now has 207.17 million non-empty wallets, according to Santiment data.

ETH was trading at $2,651.97 in the latest price data by CoinGecko. The token gained 5.63% over 24 hours and 4.80% across seven days.

Ethereum Price Gains Meet Rising Whale Activity

The increase in whale transactions adds another dimension to Ethereum’s latest price recovery. Large transactions generally indicate greater activity among holders controlling substantial ETH balances.

However, rising whale activity does not identify whether those holders are buying or selling. Traders therefore need to distinguish transaction activity from direct accumulation.

Ethereum’s holder base is also expanding. Santiment recorded a new high of 207.17 million wallets containing non-zero ETH balances.

That figure reflects wallet addresses rather than unique individuals or investors. One user can control multiple addresses, so the metric measures network participation differently.

Ethereum’s price structure has also attracted attention from market analysts. DamiDefi said ETH completed a breakout from its one-year downtrend and gained roughly 41% afterward.

The analyst now identifies a major resistance zone around current levels. A sustained break could expose $2,800 first, followed by $3,300 to $3,400, according to the analyst.

Staking and DeFi Strengthen Ethereum’s Network Utility

Ethereum’s expanding holder base sits alongside significant staking activity. More than 40 million ETH is currently staked across the network.

Staking allows ETH holders to help secure Ethereum while earning rewards. Pooled staking also gives smaller holders access without operating their own validators.

DeFi provides another use case for ETH beyond holding. Santiment estimates roughly $50 billion in total value locked across Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.

That ecosystem includes stablecoins, lending platforms, decentralized exchanges, and liquid-staking applications. These markets create demand for ETH within financial applications rather than simple price speculation.

Another analyst, Cryptocupra, compared the current structure with Ethereum’s earlier bottom, retest, and expansion cycles. The analyst projected potential levels of $4,200, $7,000, and above $12,000.

Those figures represent an analyst forecast rather than established price targets. ETH must first navigate the current resistance area before those scenarios become technically relevant.

For traders, the immediate focus remains price acceptance above resistance. For investors, whale activity, staking, wallet growth, and DeFi usage provide broader network context.

Ethereum’s latest move therefore combines price momentum with expanding network participation. The key mechanism is simple: more ETH remains engaged through staking and applications while market activity increases.

What started out as a small exploit of the Fetch.ai’s Ethereum platform evolved into a larger exploit involving two separate projects.

The exploit occurred due to a weak security check in the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance [FET] token converter. Specifically, the FET system accepted a single “approval” without verifying if those approved tokens were actually locked or burned.

After obtaining the private key behind that signature, the attacker created their own approval and withdrew the bridge’s entire FET balance in one transaction. The attacker extracted 8.72 million FET worth about $1.54 million.

Later, the same wallet cluster would receive an additional 408.5 million newly minted NuNet [NTX]. Those tokens were worth roughly $463,000. The shared destination links both incidents to one operator.

The rapid asset movement suggests an effort to consolidate the proceeds quickly. Collectively, these attacks resulted in losses totaling around $2 million.

As such, these attacks highlight issues regarding contract security, unauthorized token issuances, and potential sell pressure affecting both ecosystems.

NTX takes the bigger hit

Price data has shown how the exploitation impacted market pressure on each token. The price of NTX fell from approximately $0.00130000 to $0.00005559. This was a 95.7% drop in value over the course of 408.5 million unauthorized tokens entering circulation.

Trading volume rose 131.6% to $168,080, yet the surge failed to support a recovery. This was indicative of heavy sales as well as low demand and thus did not assist in recovering the price of the token. FET took a different route with respect to pricing.

Before the exploitation of the protocol, FET increased in value from $0.1490 to $0.1889 and experienced a gain of nearly 27% over a three-day period.

The attack pushed FET down to about $0.1711, a roughly 9% decline from its peak.

Since the hacker merely transferred existing FET instead of generating additional FET, there was relatively little dilution of the existing supply of FET, which enabled FET to absorb the impact of the hack.

FET faces a supply overhang

Ethereum Institutional signaled support for Ethlabs’ motion to reduce block times and create a faster Ethereum to address increasing competition from other networks.

“Make Ethereum faster,” wrote the non-profit organization in a Friday X post, arguing that reducing block times is needed as “more institutional activity moves onchain.” 

On Thursday, Ethlabs published an article quoting 20 decentralized finance (DeFi) founders showing broad support for EIP-8198, also known as “Quick Slots,” which seeks to initially reduce Ethereum block times to 10 seconds from 12 seconds.

Other blockchain networks are also working on similar block time reduction initiatives. On Monday, the majority of Zcash token holders backed cutting the network’s target block time to 25 seconds, down from 75 seconds.

In August, Solana reduced its slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350ms. In June, the Solana Foundation shared plans to reduce slot times from 400ms to 200ms, arguing that it would improve latency and accelerate confirmations on the blockchain network. 

EIP-8198 was authored in March and was proposed for inclusion in the Hegotá upgrade at the Ethereum core developers meeting on Aug. 6. Ethlabs said it was merging the proposal’s specifications with the main codebase and investigating potential downstream dependencies to help it “meaningfully enter Hegotá’s scope.” 

Ethereum developers could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026 following Glamsterdam, arguably one of the most consequential upgrades of the year, designed to improve scalability and harden the mainnet.

Related: Dragonfly’s Qureshi calls for end to Zcash dev fund after 2028

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Grayscale Zcash ETF Split Could Broaden Access for Investors

Grayscale is adjusting the share structure of its Zcash ETF as the privacy-focused crypto asset gains a more established foothold in traditional markets.

The firm said ZCSH will undergo a 3-for-1 forward split, with shareholders of record as of Sept. 28 receiving two additional shares for every share they own. The split is expected to become effective before trading begins on Sept. 30. ZCSH will continue trading on NYSE Arca under the same ticker.

The economics do not change. An investor holding one share before the split will own three afterward, with each representing roughly one-third of the previous net asset value per share.

As of Sept. 17, Grayscale’s ZCSH had seen net inflows of $232.3 million since its launch on Aug. 25.

Lower Share Price Could Broaden Access

The immediate impact is mechanical: ZCSH’s share price should fall proportionately while the number of outstanding shares rises. That can make the ETF easier to trade in smaller increments, even though the underlying value of each investor’s position remains unchanged.

Grayscale illustrated the effect with a hypothetical investor holding 10 shares at $300 each. After the split, that position would become 30 shares at $100 each, with the total still worth $3,000.

For crypto investors, the more important point is that Zcash exposure is now being packaged in a format that looks increasingly familiar to mainstream markets. ZCSH allows investors to gain exposure to ZEC through brokerage and investment accounts without directly buying, storing, or safeguarding the token.

ZCSH Marks a Long Road From Trust to ETF

The product itself has a longer history than its ETF listing suggests.

Grayscale Chief Legal Officer Craig Salm said the firm’s Zcash vehicle was one of just four products it offered when he joined in 2018. It began as the Zcash Investment Trust and later became the first publicly quoted Zcash fund in 2021.

In a thread on X, he highlighted the protocol’s privacy model, noting that Zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs to conceal transaction details while supporting selective disclosure for compliance purposes.

Privacy Crypto Gets a Traditional-Market Wrapper

That distinction matters because privacy has historically been one of the more difficult areas of crypto for regulated institutions.

Salm said bringing Zcash into public markets required “more regulatory engagement than usual” because of its privacy-preserving features. Grayscale is also directing 100% of ZCSH management fees toward Zcash ecosystem development and marketing for the fund.

The share split will not change ZCSH’s fundamentals. But it underscores how quickly the product is transitioning from a niche crypto trust into a more conventional market vehicle. For Zcash, that evolution may matter more than the split itself.

Ethereum [ETH] surged by 6.5% in the last 24 hours to trade at $2,618.67 at press time. This is a level the altcoin last saw back in January 2026. The timing here is interesting since the global cryptocurrency market cap also climbed to $2.88 trillion following gains of 4.6%. 

What is also interesting is that the said recovery followed several developments that would normally put significant pressure on risk assets.

For context, over the past week, the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points. Additionally, the Bank of Japan also raised rates while the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) moved back above 100 and and oil prices increased.

Not just a price playdate

And yetm Ethereum saw a surge in whale transactions. This, and its holder base, continued to expand, with a record 207.17 million non-empty wallets. Staking is another major factor that has supported long-term ETH demand.

With more than 40 million ETH currently staked, there has been a significant removal of ETH from immediately available market supply. 

At the same time, Ethereum has remained a major hub for decentralized finance (DeFi), securing roughly $50 billion in TVL across lending platforms, decentralized exchanges, stablecoin applications and liquid-staking protocols. 

Finally, ETH ETFs also flipped the three-day outflow streak with $143.7 million in inflows. 

Other altcoins also surfed the bullish momentum

Needless to say, besides Ethereum, Bitcoin [BTC] moved back above $80,000, while several major altcoins recorded more significant gains.

For instance, Solana [SOL] and Hyperliquid [HYPE] hiked by more than 10% and Uniswap [UNI] gained by around 16%.

Is there still some uncertainty around?

However, not everything may be as rosy as it seems. The Ethereum Foundation transferred approximately $2.45 million worth of ETH to an unlabeled Gnosis Safe, a type of smart contract wallet commonly used for managing funds collectively or securely.

Now, because the receiving wallet is unlabeled, it is not yet clear whether it is directly controlled by the Ethereum Foundation or belongs to another entity.

The transfer, therefore, does not necessarily mean that the foundation is selling ETH or reducing its holdings. This, because on-chain data reportedly shows that the Foundation still holds around $235.46 million worth of ETH and $23 million in USDC.

Final Summary

Ethereum’s recent gains were recorded despite several negative developments that would have impacted its bullish momentum.
Besides ETH and BTC, several altcoins saw massive surges, with some seeing weekly hikes of over 45%. 

TLDR

Ethereum developers confirmed Glamsterdam will activate on the Sepolia testnet October 6, ahead of a later Hoodi test.
Developers warned that cheap test ether could let fake builders win block auctions and then withhold their payloads.
Client teams have until September 29 to release Sepolia-ready software, leaving only seven days for review.
Devnet-11 finished its Gloas transition and raised the gas limit from 60 million to 200 million without losing finality.
Ethereum has not set a mainnet date for Glamsterdam, with the roadmap still pointing to the fourth quarter of 2026.

Ethereum developers have picked October 6 as the date for the Glamsterdam upgrade to go live on the Sepolia testnet. The decision came out of the September 17 All Core Developers Consensus call.

Developers also raised a warning during that same call. They said cheap test ether could allow bad actors to disrupt the network during the public testing phase.

The concern centers on a new feature called Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation, or ePBS. This is part of the EIP-7732 proposal included in Glamsterdam.

What Is Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation?

ePBS separates the job of building transaction blocks from the job of validating them. Builders submit bids for the right to supply a block, and the winning builder is supposed to hand over the transactions inside it.

On the main Ethereum network, this system works because block space costs real money. That cost limits how much bad behavior can happen.

Test ether does not carry that same cost. Consensus developer Potuz explained that an attacker could create many fake builder identities using free test ether.

He said an attacker could bid aggressively, win the auction, and then refuse to hand over the promised block. “I can just spin up a thousand builders,” Potuz said on the call. He added that “any teenager can do this.”

Potuz said this is not a way to steal real ETH. It is a way to disrupt the public test network so that other teams cannot rely on it working properly.

He also said current safety measures may not react fast enough. Some client software only switches to a backup block after several payloads are missed, and attackers could keep returning under new identities.

Devnet-11 And The Path To Sepolia

Before Sepolia, developers ran a rehearsal called Devnet-11. This test network was not designed to include attacks, unlike a separate ongoing test environment called Platåberget.

Devnet-11 began on September 14. It completed its Gloas transition on September 16 and then raised its gas limit from 60 million to 200 million.

The network used 84,000 validators across multiple client teams. It kept its finality intact through the process, according to a CoinDesk report. The 200 million figure is only a test setting, not a confirmed number for the main network.

Client teams normally get 14 days to review software before a public test launch. This time, developers agreed on a September 29 deadline for releases, which leaves seven days before the October 6 launch.

Developer Alex Stokes asked teams to release their software as early as possible. That would give more reviewers time to check the code and give Ethereum’s bug bounty process more time to catch problems.

This compressed schedule follows earlier testing trouble. Devnet-8 had finality issues during its Gloas activation, and Devnet-9 also experienced unplanned non-finality before teams reached Devnet-11.

Sepolia was chosen for the first public run partly because its validator set is controlled by a smaller group of teams. That makes it easier to fix if problems come up.

The Hoodi testnet is expected to follow Sepolia. Hoodi has an open validator set, and its timing depends on how Sepolia performs first.

Ethereum’s public roadmap still lists Glamsterdam for the fourth quarter of 2026. No mainnet activation date or epoch number has been published.

As of now, client teams are working toward the September 29 software deadline, with Sepolia’s test launch set for October 6.

Privacy Coin Surge and Market Decoupling

Zcash (ZEC) price nearly breached $1,400 Thursday amid a privacy coin rally that saw several coins post double-digit gains. Market data shows the privacy coin, which traded close to $1,100 late Sept. 15, briefly tapped $1,388 before consolidating above $1,370 around 5:45 a.m. EST.

The coin’s nearly 15% jump in 24 hours lifted its market capitalization to $23.21 billion, widening the gap with the next-ranked HPYE, whose market cap stood at nearly $18 billion. ZEC has also extended its lead over main rival monero (XMR) to more than $10 billion following its latest surge.

While XMR was one of a handful of coins to trend downward, several prominent coins logged gains in excess of 10%, including NEAR (16%) and DASH (10.4%). A few other micro-privacy coins also registered double-digit gains, while coins like LTC and LINK rose 3.7% and 3.4%, respectively. This general trend saw the aggregate market capitalization of privacy coins tracked by Coingecko jump by more than 7% to $52 billion.

This performance stands in sharp contrast to the broader crypto market, which rose just 1.3% to $2.7 trillion over the same period. Headwinds from the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass the CLARITY Act, combined with the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike Wednesday, capped gains across the wider market.

As reported by Bitcoin.com News, ZEC’s initial surge appeared to be driven by the community’s overwhelming vote to cut the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 and to preserve Zcash’s Bitcoin-style halving schedule. Adding fuel to the momentum were public comments from Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of venture capital firm Paradigm.

In a post on X, Huang defended the necessity of Zcash’s inflation-funded developer fund to protect against long-term threats like artificial intelligence (AI) cyber threats and quantum computing progress. He also advocated for combining coin voting with other governance mechanisms to protect Zcash’s credibility.

“As ZCash grows in acceptance and adoption as a private complement to Bitcoin, we think pure coin voting governance introduces unpredictability that could limit long-term trust as a monetary asset, and it is better for the project to combine coin voting with other forms of governance,” Huang wrote.

Huang’s disclosure that Paradigm remains an investor in ZEC and ZODL, alongside subsequent market discussion echoing his stance on long-term protocol security, bolstered institutional confidence and further accelerated the token’s upward momentum.

Ethereum and Base are set to implement different account abstraction standards after efforts to agree on a shared account abstraction standard broke down last week.

Interoperability standards became secondary to each chain’s core goals, leading both to go their separate ways and “putting the burden on wallets,” Derek Chiang, founding member and researcher at Ethlabs, as well as a co-author of Ethereum’s EIP-8141 proposal, said in a Monday X post.

The divergence could require wallet developers to support separate transaction formats to provide a consistent experience across networks. Account abstraction allows programmable rules for authorizing transactions and paying fees.

Ethereum is now advancing Frame Transactions under EIP-8141 as a “headliner” item under its Hegotá upgrade, which would introduce native account abstraction and create a path toward post-quantum authentication. Separately, Base is developing native account abstraction via Keystore under EIP-8130, currently live on devnet.

The divergence also highlights different priorities between layer-1 and layer-2 blockchain networks. Chiang said L1s are increasingly focused on censorship, capture-resistance, open-source, privacy and security features, favoring different account standards, while scalability-focused L2s are more aligned with standards such as EIP-8130.

The researcher argued that the separation won’t necessarily result in a bad outcome, as both Ethereum and Base are now “free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions.” 

Ethereum developers could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026 following Glamsterdam, arguably one of the most consequential upgrades of the year. Glamsterdam is designed to improve scalability, harden the L1, and make the network easier to use, with a mainnet launch expected sometime in the second half of 2026, according to Ethereum’s public roadmap.  

Related: Standard Chartered forecasts SKY rising fivefold to $0.325 by 2028

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

“This may be Bitcoin’s [BTC] biggest test yet” is how the market is currently describing the situation.

In just under three weeks, the markets have changed drastically. Back then, it was FOMO, as the Fear & Greed Index peaked at 74, which meant strong greed for investors and coincided with BTC’s $82k reclamation. Now it’s 50, meaning that Bitcoin is precisely in the middle of FUD and FOMO.

Visually, nothing illustrates this better than Santiment’s recent report. From the 19th to the 21st of August, BTC was heading towards $80k, triggering a strong rise in bullish social chatter. Then on the 3rd of September, FOMO peaked again as BTC broke above $80k. However, by the 15th of September, sentiment flipped toward FUD.

Bitcoin fell after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, while discussions around lower prices reached their highest level for the month.

In short, where the index moves next will set the tone for Bitcoin’s next move. 

It’s here that CryptoQuant’s recent report starts to gain weight. It showed Bitcoin’s Bull Score dropping from 80 to 60 in just one week. That’s a sign that the bullish setup is losing strength, with momentum and market conditions starting to weaken. With the CLARITY Act stalled and the Fed hiking rates for the first time since 2023, the Bull Score adds another warning sign for Bitcoin.

Against this backdrop, ETF outflows and a negative Coinbase Premium Index also start to make sense. They point to weaker US demand and some rotation away from Bitcoin as short-term pullback risks rise. If this trend continues, FUD could end up driving the rest of September for Bitcoin, in turn explaining why the Fear & Greed Index could slide further.

Bitcoin’s bear trap signals point to a sentiment reversal

Interestingly, Bitcoin is showing signs that a bear trap cannot be ruled out.

Just hours before the FOMC decision, a whale opened up a $50 million Bitcoin short, with an entry price near $76k and liquidation around $77k. That triggered a wave of speculation across social media. But technically, BTC is still holding strong around $76k despite the short pressure.

If BTC breaches the $77k level, the position will be liquidated unless the whale closes it early. Thus, there is enough room for a short squeeze to drive prices to the upside. The NUPL metric also supports this scenario. Despite the correction, Bitcoin’s NUPL remains above the red zone, indicating that the market is still sitting on aggregate unrealized profit.

So, while sentiment has weakened, the on-chain data does not yet show broad capitulation.

According to AMBCrypto, this means that FOMO is far from over. If BTC manages to hold key support and the bear-trap signals persist, the Fear & Greed Index could technically shift back towards the greed zone, adding to the upward impulse. This would fuel the reversal of sentiment and bring even more FOMO into the market.

In that case, the current FUD could prove to be a reset rather than the beginning of a bearish trend.

Final Summary

TLDR

Ethereum exchange supply has fallen 73% from its June 2020 peak, dropping to 6.06 million ETH.
More ETH is moving into staking, ETFs, corporate treasuries, and long-term custody.
BitMine now holds 5.96 million ETH, equal to about 4.9% of Ethereum’s total supply.
Ethereum ETFs recorded nearly $197 million in net inflows last week, followed by another $121 million on Monday.
Analysts are watching the $2,567 to $2,666 zone as Ethereum trades ahead of the CLARITY Act vote and the FOMC meeting.

Ethereum’s exchange supply has dropped sharply, reducing the amount of ETH available for selling. Santiment estimates that exchanges now hold 6.06 million Ethereum, down from 22.9 million in June 2020. That marks a 73% decline in liquid exchange supply. The shift matters for Ethereum holders because more coins now sit outside trading platforms.

Much of that ETH has moved into staking, exchange-traded funds, corporate treasuries, and long-term custody. With fewer tokens close to order books, large sell waves may face a thinner pool of available supply.

Ethereum Holders Face a Tighter Liquid Market

Santiment said shrinking exchange balances can make price moves sensitive to demand changes. Buying pressure does not need to rise sharply if fewer ETH remain available for immediate sale.

At the same time, analysts watch key price levels. Crypto Patel identified the $2,567 to $2,666 range as an important zone. A rejection could expose $2,150, $2,000, and $1,800, while a confirmed close above $2,666 could open room toward $3,100 and $4,000.

Daan Crypto Trades described Ethereum’s recent action as volatile ahead of the CLARITY Act vote and the Federal Reserve meeting. Traders have positioned early around both events, creating moves in both directions.

The analyst said a failed or delayed vote could bring more downside before the market settles into choppy trading ahead of the Fed decision. Ethereum holders may continue to see unstable price action until those events pass.

BitMine Nears Its Ethereum Treasury Goal

BitMine now holds 5,956,378 ETH after adding 27,180 tokens over the past week. That equals about 4.9% of Ethereum’s 122 million total supply and places the company near its 5% target. The company has staked 5,067,309 ETH through its MAVAN validator network, or about 85% of its holdings. Tom Lee expects annualized staking revenue to reach $334 million and rise to $392 million if the full treasury enters staking.

Ethereum ETFs recorded nearly $197 million in net inflows last week. The final session brought in $216.4 million and offset earlier outflows. Monday added another $121 million in net inflows, bringing the monthly total close to $450 million. Combined with falling exchange balances, ETF demand continues to reduce readily available ETH and keeps supply conditions tight for Ethereum holders.