Ethereum launches Mekong Testnet ahead of the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. As the network scales, will ETH price break $3,500 in the coming months?
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is building, and what’s even cooler is that ETH is breaking out after over two months of pure “misery.”
Admittedly, though Ethereum is the most active smart contracts platform, looking at the number of dApps deployed and volume shipped by each of the numerous protocols, the network can’t keep up with what other new, “modern” chains offer.
This preview is especially relevant considering transaction processing speeds and fees. Transacting on the main net can be a nightmare for meme coin enthusiasts. Simply put, gas fees are way higher than what Solana or Ethereum layer-2 options provide.
Mekong Testnet Live As Ethereum Prepares For Pectra
The good news is that developers are aware of and are actively looking for solutions to address these concerns.
Yesterday, the Ethereum Foundation, which advocates for the building and development of the first smart contracts platform, announced the release of the Mekong Testnet.
The release is simple: Ethereum is preparing for the “Pectra” hard fork, which is scheduled for early next year.
Mekong provides some sort of a “sandbox”, a place where developers can explore features Pectra presents.
Of importance, proposals set to be implemented on the hard fork will be checked for errors in Mekong.
This is crucial.
After Pectra, there will be changes to staking workflows, especially on how staking, withdrawals, and reward handling is done.
At the same time, wallet users must adjust content to the user interface, which is a key emphasis in this update.
Other changes will revolve around scalability, making dApps on the mainnet more performant, such as a boom for meme coins like Pepe and Pepe Unchained.
Pepe Unchained is a layer-2 platform for Ethereum for meme coins. It has raised over $25 million in presales currently in progress.
The test net will be open from today, November 7, and marks a cool place to start for developers ahead of Devcon in Bangkok.
However, unlike Sepolia in the past, the testnet environment will be open briefly before being unwound.
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Will ETH Hit $3,500?
Pectra will be a major update for Ethereum after Dencun. The last hard fork made transacting on layer-2 90% cheaper. Accordingly, though activity has spiked on these off-chain platforms, ETH prices have been hammered.
The coin is now more deflationary as major layer-2 solution providers like Base and Arbitrum only have to pay a small portion of their total revenue as data availability fees to mainnet validators.
As a result, ETH is now more inflationary, looking at Ultra Sound Money data.
(Source)
Ahead of Pectra, traders are confident, expecting bulls to buy every dip, targeting $3,500 in the medium term.
(ETHUSDT)
From the ETHUSDT daily chart, the coin is within a bullish breakout formation.
Primary support is now the zone between $2,700 and $2,800, while resistance is at $3,000 and $3,500–or July highs.
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