Ethereum Hard Fork Goes Live; What Next for ETH?
Despite the successful Ethereum Istanbul hard fork, the ETH price action continues to take a dip. Investors are not happy with the price action as sellers appear to be in control of the ETH market. At press time, ETH was changing hands at $150.12 after gains of 0.87 against the dollar in the last 24 hours.
The price drop comes at a time when investors were anticipating an upward momentum after the Istanbul hard fork. However, the bullish catalysts did not happen after the successful software upgrade. ETH hit a huge drop up to $135 in late November which means it has accrued strong support level.
Ethereum Istanbul Hard Fork Overwhelming Support 
After the successful Ethereum Istanbul hard fork many high profile exchanges has shown a lot of support for the network upgrade. The same support has been noted from node operators and miners. The smooth software upgrade and the support is clear indications of what users expect from the hard fork.
Binance made the support agreement on December 5 with its US subsidiary following suit. A da ago, Coinbase, through their twitter handle, announced the resumption of Ethereum and ERC20 token withdrawals and deposits on all its trading platforms.
Another leading exchange, Kraken indicated that it has undergone a node upgrade in line with the Ethereum software upgrade. Poloniex has also indicated they are supporting the hard fork. Others in support of the upgrade include Bitfinex and Kraken.
After Istanbul Hard Fork What Changes for Ethereum?
One of the most exciting news after the Ethereum software upgrade is that Zcash Tech is set to power the Ethereum ecosystems privacy and scalability. It is not something ne since zero knowledge cryptography has been fronted as the future addition on the Ethereum network.
This simply means that there is additional privacy for the ERC tokens and increased scalability through the off-chain anticipated solutions. This might not directly translate to better value for the ETH coin but is a long term solution for the ETH investor and users.
In the short term, the software transition will see gas prices on the Ethereum ecosystem reduce drastically. Lowering some computation costs will translate into ow transaction fees. Initially, computing processes were manually set thus giving the wrong costs.
Other Istanbul Improvements
The Istanbul hard fork ushers in a new era of side chain support and additional platform optimization. The introduction of EIP-2200 improves the gas mastering and optimizes data usage using the smart contract technology. With increased optimization and lowering gas cost, the network’s future appears to be bright.
However, it is important to note that Ethereum is not a lone player in the crypto verse. Any shift in BTC prices tends to have a ripple effect across the altcoin market. The Ethereum hard fork was just a remedial patch up to improve the functioning of the ecosystem as part of infrastructure improvement.
The software upgrade might not translate into investor benefits but is aimed at improving the Ethereum ecosystem in readiness for the anticipated user demand in the future. The crypt market is very dynamic thus need for continuous upgrade to meet future challenges.
