Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH holds $2,200 support despite Pectra's issues on Sepolia testnet

Ethereum

FXStreetMar 6, 2025 1:20 AM

Ethereum price today: $2,240

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade has returned to normal operation on the Sepolia testnet after developers fixed bugs in its deposit contract.
Developers assured users that the issues don't affect Pectra's mainnet deployment.
ETH is struggling to hold the $2,200 support level as the Stoch hits the oversold region.

Ethereum (ETH) is up on Wednesday after developers fixed issues with the Pectra upgrade's deployment on the Sepolia testnet. The top altcoin aims to hold the $2,200 support level amid negative sentiments from Pectra's failure on testnets.

Ethereum faces issues with Pectra deployment on Sepolia

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia testnet — an environment for testing features before full-scale deployment — has returned to normal operation after encountering challenges.

Tim Beiko, who coordinates Ethereum core developers meetings, stated in a blog post that the upgrade on Sepolia originated from a bug in its deposit contract that prevented execution layer (EL) clients from including transactions in blocks. However, developers quickly coordinated to resolve the problem.

"We've identified and deployed a fix for the Sepolia deposit contract issue found earlier today," wrote Beiko in an X post.

This marks the second issue that Pectra has encountered on testnets in less than two weeks. Pectra failed to finalize on the Holesky testnet last week due to configuration issues with EL clients.

While Pectra's recent testnet challenges sparked concerns among Ethereum community members, developers have assured users that the issues are only peculiar to testnets.

"This issue is due to Sepolia's configuration and could not occur on the Ethereum mainnet," added Beiko.

Sepolia is the last testnet upgrade before Pectra's mainnet deployment, which developers had initially slated for April. Recent issues make it unclear whether developers would proceed with Pectra's initial schedule.

Pectra will introduce several improvements to Ethereum, including account abstraction features like sponsored transactions, payment of gas fees with ERC-20 tokens and improved wallet recovery options.

Pectra will also enable stakers to consolidate their resources by increasing the maximum staking balance per node from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH struggles to hold $2,200 support

Ethereum experienced $44.63 million in futures liquidations in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data. The total amount of liquidated long and short positions accounted for $20.02 million and $24.61 million, respectively.

ETH saw a rejection near the lower boundary of an ascending channel earlier in the week and has struggled to hold the support level near $2,200.

ETH/USDT weekly chart

If ETH reclaims the channel's lower boundary, it could retest the critical resistance near $2,850.

However, a weekly candlestick close below $2,200 could send ETH to find support near $1,500.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is below its neutral level, while the Stochastic Oscillator (Stoch) has crossed into the oversold region. This indicates dominant bearish momentum and signs of potential sellers' exhaustion.

Ethereum FAQs

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain with smart contracts functionality. Its native currency Ether (ETH), is the second-largest cryptocurrency and number one altcoin by market capitalization. The Ethereum network is tailored for building crypto solutions like decentralized finance (DeFi), GameFi, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), etc.

What type of blockchain does Ethereum fall under?

Ethereum is a public decentralized blockchain technology, where developers can build and deploy applications that function without the need for a central authority. To make this easier, the network leverages the Solidity programming language and Ethereum virtual machine which helps developers create and launch applications with smart contract functionality.

What are smart contracts?

Smart contracts are publicly verifiable codes that automates agreements between two or more parties. Basically, these codes self-execute encoded actions when predetermined conditions are met.

What is staking and why did Ethereum shift from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake?

Staking is a process of earning yield on your idle crypto assets by locking them in a crypto protocol for a specified duration as a means of contributing to its security. Ethereum transitioned from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism on September 15, 2022, in an event christened “The Merge.” The Merge was a key part of Ethereum's roadmap to achieve high-level scalability, decentralization and security while remaining sustainable. Unlike PoW, which requires the use of expensive hardware, PoS reduces the barrier of entry for validators by leveraging the use of crypto tokens as the core foundation of its consensus process.

What is gas in the context of Ethereum?

Gas is the unit for measuring transaction fees that users pay for conducting transactions on Ethereum. During periods of network congestion, gas can be extremely high, causing validators to prioritize transactions based on their fees.

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