Ethereum’s Recent Rally

Ethereum has rallied to more than $3,800 this week, gaining roughly 60% over the past month, according to data provider CoinGecko—a sign that “ETH season” is finally nigh.

But as the altcoin rises from the doldrums, one question remains foremost for the token’s holders: Will this ETH revival last?

Jeff Garzik, an early Bitcoin programmer who worked on the blockchain with its creator Satoshi Nakamoto over a decade ago, stated that Ethereum and its native token will thrive, largely due to the usefulness and ubiquity of its technology.

> “I’m not bearish on Ethereum because everybody is building on EVM,” Garzik told Decrypt, referring to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, a decentralized computation engine executing smart contracts on the Ethereum network.

Garzik’s endorsement comes as the layer-1 appears to recover from a confidence crisis that coincided with ETH’s plunge to $1,410 on April 7—its lowest price since March 2023.

The Ethereum Foundation also underwent leadership changes earlier this year amid fears that the layer-1 was losing ground to rival blockchains like Solana, raising investor concerns over its roadmap.

However, Ethereum’s fortunes have improved recently. ETH reached $3,844 on July 21 and popped even higher earlier Sunday, remaining roughly $1,000 below its all-time high of $4,878 from November 2021. This surge is buoyed by significant institutional and corporate investments.

Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $2.12 billion worth of inflows recently, nearly doubling their previous record, and flipping Bitcoin ETF flows.

Moreover, Ethereum treasury companies such as Bitmine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink have added billions in ETH to their reserves over recent weeks.

Garzik believes it is Ethereum’s technological contributions—not just recent investment interest—that indicate long-term success. He has utilized EVM tech for Hemi Network, a layer-2 network compatible with both Bitcoin and Ethereum, which launched its mainnet in March.

> “I look at it maybe from a different perspective than price,” Garzik noted. “What’s going to be here 10 years from now, 20 years from now? I think it’s unquestionably Bitcoin and Ethereum.”

Declining to offer a price prediction for ETH, Garzik observed that much of the crypto ecosystem relies on Ethereum’s technology for programmability and smart contracts.

> “The default choice for programmability … and for smart contracts is to be building on Ethereum tech,” he said. “Everybody wants to, whether it’s an L1 or an L2.”

EVM is utilized across many popular blockchains, including Avalanche, Polygon, and Arbitrum.

When asked about Ethereum competitors such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos—using their own nodes and programming languages instead of EVM—Garzik responded:

> “You’ve got a lot of people saying, ‘I’ve got this latest whizbang technology. It’s gonna smoke Ethereum, and Ethereum is like yesterday’s news.’ But none of them have time in the market.”

He recalled a joke about Microsoft during the browser wars of the late 1990s:

> “The joke goes, if Microsoft made a car, it’d go 1000 miles an hour, it’d randomly crash, turn left, and explode when you least expect it. Some of the newer blockchains are like that.”