So far in 2022, Ethereum has remained the worst-performing cryptocurrency among the top 5. Amid massive retail and institutional selling pressure, the digital asset plunged below $1,800 on 27 May 2022.
Compared to an all-time high of almost $4,900 in November 2021, Ethereum is currently down by almost 60%. As a result, a large percentage of ETH addresses are suffering from huge losses. According to the on-chain analytics platform, Glassnode, 58.08% of Ethereum addresses are now in profit, which is the lowest level since July 2020.
Moreover, Institutional inflows in Ethereum investment products have dipped significantly since ETH’s all-time high in November last year. Outflows from ETH products since 1 January 2022 stand at around $239 million, compared to the inflows of $307 million in BTC products.
As a result of the recent dip in the percentage of profitable ETH supply and a sharp decline in its institutional inflows, the number of dormant Ethereum addresses has increased. Glassnode’s data shows that the ETH supply active at least 5 years ago touched an all-time high of 9.61 million ETH on 27 May.
Ethereum Network Activity
Across the ETH network, the most notable development in the past few weeks was Ethereum’s declining gas fees amid a drop in the number of transactions on the network.
“ETH continues to show extreme low fee levels, indicating very minimal activity and hints of stagnancy and fear. This hibernation behavior also applies to ETH's often paired stable coin, DAI,” Santiment noted in its recent report.
On the other hand, the deposit contract of Ethereum 2.0 has kept attracting the crypto community over the past few weeks despite ETH’s price dip. Now, the staking contract has approximately 12.68 million coins, which is the highest level on record. The total value of the staked coins under the contract presently stands at around $22 billion.
