Ethereum (available on Coinbase) (ETH) had a comeback weekend, this past weekend and has now reclaimed it’s long-time #2 spot on the cryptocurrency market, passing Ripple (available on Binance).

Source: CoinMarketCap

At press-time, ETH is trading at $1,115.24 a coin, down -1.47% in 24 hours. However, it grew nearly 44.4% in just a week’s time, as its fourth-quarter report performance was announced to the public, causing the transactions on the network to nearly double. On Saturday, ETHer hit an all-time high of $1,261.41 at 04:49:09 UTC. Its current market cap is just over $108 billion now, making it just under 15% of the entire cryptocurrency market.

Ethereum (available on Coinbase)’s new spark could be due to its recent test launch of its test network, Casper, which is a significant upgrade to the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) protocol. The upgrade would introduce a new and more efficient way the network forms consensuses. Also, Ethereum (available on Coinbase)’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin just released an article on the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) blog about his launch of two subsidy programs to incentivize third-party developers to solve its scalability issue.

Scalability

Scalability has been the biggest crux of the cryptocurrency and it clearly showed itself when the cryptokitties game launch on its network, at the end of November. At one point, the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) blockchain had a backlog of close to 30,000 transactions on its network, in the peak of the game’s popularity and at one point took up close to 30% of the network’s total hashing power.

This event, having an updated system, could have been monumental for the digital currency. Back on December 6th, a user spent 253.3369 ETH on one digital cat, which at the time, came to $110,707.16 USD. Since its launch, there have been 256,252 sales and in total $18,537,781.00 USD has been on games, 95% of which was spent within a weeks time. As you can tell by the figures above, if the network was able to handle the amount of the traffic being driven to it, the game could still have been massive and making money.

What Now?

It seems that Ethereum (available on Coinbase) loyalists, despite its issues have continued to back the cryptocurrency and the developing team behind it. ICOs that were built on its blockchain made over $5.6 billion in 2017, and in just December raised $1.2 billion of that overall total. It seems in the first part of 2018, the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) network is moving along just fine as developers and the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) team continue to work on its scalability.

Featured Image: twitter