Ethereum

Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism Raised $150 Million in Series A Funding

Ethereum scaling solution, Optimism has raised $150 million in Series B funding, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm.

In the latest blog ,, the blockchain startup disclosed that its current value is $1. 65 billion. This new round of funding will go towards the expansion of its team.

Optimism Solves Ethereum’s Scalability Woes

Ethereum is a very popular computing platform, rich in DeFi and NFT apps. However, the dramatic rise in developer and user demand has resulted in dramatic gas fees. Optimism uses optimistic rollups to achieve substantially lower costs, latency and greater throughput than Ethereum Layer 1, without compromising security features of its underlying blockchain.

After the recent fundraise Optimism CEO Jinglan Wang was quoted as saying ,

“We made a commitment to the public that we would not take profit from operating centralized parts of the system, so we wanted to remove the financial incentive for ourselves to remain centralized.”

While confirming the investment in Optimism, Chris Dixon, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, stated that scaling Ethereum is a crucial near-term challenge and added that it will “dramatically expand the design space for Web3 applications.”

Milestones

A blog post revealed that Optimism customers have reported saving $1 billion on gas in the past year. This includes thousands of code deployments and three forks going live. Optimism has also slashed fees by over 30% in the past year, and plans on working towards enhancing the protocol to cut costs even further.

Optimism is all set to decrease fees by 30-40% by deploying the first-ever system-wide calldata compression in the next few weeks, the statement said.

As part Optimism, Bedrock, the startup will allow for more fee reduction by theoretically allowing optimal transaction submission costs via Cannon. Cannon is its next-generation fault-proof. The team will also be contributing to the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-4844), aka Shard Blob Transactions, which boasts the potential to slash fees by up to 100x.

The team stated ,

” Our greatest asset is our people. The Optimism team already has a lot of talent whose brains can only be surpassed by their big hearts. As a team we have been growing tremendously and are extremely proud to have amassed such an amazing group of technical talent. “

According to the latest stats by DeFi Llama, Optimism has more than $360 million in total value locked (TVL) on the platform. The figures noted a steep 96.6% rise in the last week of October from just $150 million to $295 million in three days. The TVL hit almost $400 million in TVL in January this year.

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Ethereum

Ethereum Derivatives Traders Position for $4K Rebound, Data Shows

Ethereum ( ETH) derivatives traders are back in full swing, with open interest, volume, and options activity all flashing signs of renewed energy across futures and options markets. ETH Max Pain Sits Near $3,300 as Traders Eye Key Expiry Levels At 10 a.m. Eastern time on Nov…
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Ethereum

ETH2 Beacon Deposit Contract Now Controls 60% Of All Ethereum: Arkham

Rain Lohmus bought $75,000 worth of ETH in 2014, which is now worth $871 million. Yet, he cannot move even a single coin.

New on-chain research from Arkham Intelligence this week shows that the wallet address holding the most ETH today is not an individual, not an exchange, not an ETF issuer, but the staking contract that secures Ethereum.

According to Arkham, the ETH2 Beacon Deposit Contract currently holds more than 72.4 million ETH, worth around $252 billion at current market prices, and represents approximately 60% of the total supply.

Ethereum’s Power Center

In terms of individuals, the research firm confirmed that the largest known individual holder of ETH is still Rain Lohmus, the founder of Estonian bank LHV, who bought 250,000 ETH in the 2014 presale for around $75,000. Those coins would now be worth roughly $871 million, but Lohmus does not have access to them because he lost the private keys years ago.

The second largest identifiable individual holder is Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who currently holds around 240,000 ETH, worth around $840 million.

Beyond individual wallets, centralized exchanges and institutional entities collectively control some of the largest pools of Ether. Binance, for one, holds approximately 4.09 million ETH, while asset manager BlackRock holds around 3.94 million ETH, largely associated with its iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. Coinbase is the next largest institutional holder, with approximately 3.5 million ETH across multiple addresses, including cold wallets and staking reserves for its cbETH staking token.

Following suit are Upbit, Robinhood, Kraken, OKX, and Bitfinex, which appear among the top institutional holders.

Seized Funds, Stolen Funds, and Layer-2 Bridges

Arkham found that governments also appear on the leaderboard. For instance, the United States government controls around 60,000 ETH, which largely consists of seized criminal funds, including from the Potapenko/Turogin case and from seizures related to the Bitfinex hacker.

Ethereum

Ethereum Traders Just Flipped Bullish, But History Says This Is a Major Red Flag

Ethereum’s bounce toward $3,500 triggered instant FOMO, but Santiment says extreme optimism usually means price is about to disappoint.

Ethereum traders have swung sharply from extreme bearishness to extreme bullishness within just a few days, based on social media sentiment.

But fresh data suggest that when ETH nearly rebounded to $3,500 on Thursday, the crowd interpreted the move as a confirmation that the asset was “back in business.”

ETH Trader FOMO

Santiment warned that this sudden pivot is similar to the same pattern seen earlier in the week, when retail panic selling actually contributed to the rebound. Now, the rapid return of FOMO could similarly stall further upside.

According to the analytics platform, prices have shown a tendency to move in the opposite direction of the crowd, and that more neutral sentiment phases have proven to be stronger buy signal environments than euphoric ones.

Crypto trader Ted Pillows also noted that even though the altcoin is showing some rebound after this week’s sharp decline, the recovery lacks conviction. According to Pillows, the current move higher, though modest, is being driven largely by short positions being closed rather than new spot buyers stepping in. He added that Ethereum needs to reclaim the $3,600-$3,700 price range with meaningful inflows to establish strength and dismiss the risk of further downside. Without that confirmation, Pillows believes the odds still favor lower prices from here.

Despite the near-term uncertainty, some traders say the bigger picture is still pointing toward a substantial upside scenario. For instance, crypto trader “Trader Tradigrade” said that ETH’s monthly chart is currently developing what he describes as a massive Inverse Head and Shoulders pattern, with a potential price target of $14,000 once confirmed.

“Wet Blanket” Phase

As the crypto market remains sluggish, Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz believes that this could be due to long-term holders rebalancing their net worths and diversifying away from massive concentrated holdings after a very long bull market. Novogratz deems this to be a healthy sign in the medium and long term as these positions get distributed. In the short run, however, he said that “it’s a proverbial wet blanket” and has weighed on prices.

About the author

Chayanika has been working as a financial journalist for six years. A graduate in Political Science and Journalism, her interest lies in regulatory implications with a focus on technological evolution in the crypto realm.