Ethereum Shapella Upgrade — Alternative Data Overview
With numerous researches and analyses on Shapella available on the web, today we will overview how the Ethereum update looked like from an alternative data perspective — Twitter and Reddit mentions, the sentiment of these mentions, GitHub development activity before and after the upgrade, and how these indicators reflected on the price chart.
Long story short — on April 12, 2023, the Ethereum blockchain underwent its Shapella upgrade — a combination of amendments to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) called Shanghai and the consensus layer called Capella. The main feature of the upgrade is allowing users to withdraw their staked Ether (ETH) for the first time with a daily withdrawal limit of 115,200 ETH.
Nansen created a dashboard to highlight all the key data points around this upgrade. Since the upgrade 15 hours ago, 140k ETH has been withdrawn, and 60k ETH was deposited:
And we’ve already seen a massive milestone in its price — $ETH just passed $2,000 after the upgrade:
The on-chain data looks great, but let’s analyze what Contora knows the best — the data left behind the chain.
Social mentions
Before the upgrade, Twitter and Reddit mentions of Ethereum were relatively stable, with no significant spikes. However, on the day of the upgrade, $ETH Twitter and Reddit mentions increased significantly, indicating a high level of interest in the upgrade:
Moreover, the increased interest in Ethereum could be attributed to the Shapella upgrade being a significant development for the blockchain. The upgrade not only allowed users to withdraw their staked ETH for the first time, but it also lowered transaction fees and increased the blockchain’s capacity to handle more transactions per second. This is a significant advantage for the Ethereum network, positioning it for sustained growth and success.
Sentiment of social mentions
Speaking about the sentiment of these mentions, we can also spot a clear positive increase above the 0.5 (neutral) baseline. That means that the Shapella upgrade was accepted positively by the Ethereum community and crypto market overall:
Development activity
From the development activity perspective, the $ETH right now is in its most powerful form in 2023. It means that the Ethereum development community was actively working on the project before the upgrade (and not only before the upgrade, the complete development history looks stable and robust). The charts below show the historical number of active GitHub contributors and commits:
Moreover, $ETH is in the top-3 projects by the number of active GitHub contributors over the last month (Polkadot and Cardano are the leaders):
To sum it up, the Shapella upgrade has been accepted positively by the crypto market, and the ability to withdraw staked ETH might entice investors to stake the token, thereby increasing capital inflows. Overall, the increased interest in Ethereum, its positive sentiment, and its continued development all suggest that Ethereum is well-positioned for future success.
Hope you enjoyed today’s little overview of the Shappela upgrade. Show us some support with your 👏🏻, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for more crypto market insights based on alternative data.
P.S. If you represent a business and are interested in getting access to these and many other crypto data (real-time social media mentions and sentiment, development activity, founding team scoring) or API, just drop us a line at contora.ai.
