Ethereum Price Forecast; ETH-USD Stuck Around $3,1K While Network Usage Breaks Records

Ethereum Price: Range-Bound Around $3,100 Under A Hard $3,500 Ceiling

ETH-USD is locked in a broad range between roughly $2,700 and $3,500, with spot hovering around $3,000–$3,100. The real problem for buyers is not the $3,000 handle itself but the confluence of the 100- and 200-day moving averages near $3,500, which caps every serious attempt to trend. As long as ETH-USD trades below that $3,500 band, the market is dealing with a sideways structure, not a confirmed bullish leg toward $4,000 and above. The daily RSI has recovered from previous weakness but is not washed out, which means there is room for upside in the short term without any guarantee that a decisive breakout is imminent. Price is simply oscillating inside a defined box where direction is decided by flows, not narratives.

Short-Term Structure For ETH-USD: $3,100 Supply Versus $2,800–$2,700 Demand

On the 4-hour chart, ETH-USD has repeatedly collided with a bearish order block around $3,100–$3,120, where sellers defended aggressively in prior attempts. Each drive into that pocket has been met with supply and followed by a clean rejection, including the latest leg up. At the same time, the market has been constructing higher lows since mid-December, which keeps the short-term structure technically constructive. That tension defines the current setup. If ETH-USD can finally close and hold above $3,100–$3,120 on high volume, the path opens toward $3,300 first and then the key $3,500 resistance cluster. If the zone rejects again, the logical downside targets are $2,900, then $2,800, and finally the lower range demand around $2,700, where buying has repeatedly reappeared. Intraday RSI on this timeframe is already stretched into overbought territory, which fits the idea of froth building under resistance rather than a deeply under-owned opportunity.

Critical Support Zones: $3,000 Pivot, $2,760 Defense, $2,500 Line In The Sand

The downside levels that matter for ETH-USD are explicit in the data you provided. The first pivot is the $3,000 region itself, a psychological line that short-term traders watch closely. Cleanly losing that area on strong selling pressure turns the immediate tape into a momentum short until liquidity appears lower. A more structural threshold sits around $2,760, flagged by analysts as the level that must hold if Ethereum is to avoid a deeper drawdown that could reach roughly 44% in 2026. Below that, the real line in the sand is near $2,500, which has acted as a higher-low base through multiple tests. As long as ETH-USD remains above $2,500, the medium-term bullish structure—higher lows working toward a break of the $3,300–$3,500 band—remains intact. A decisive breakdown through $2,500 would change the conversation from “correction in an uptrend” to “trend failure,” and the market would start to price in a different regime.

Derivatives Positioning: Rising Open Interest, Long Crowding And Liquidation Risk

Derivatives flows around ETH-USD are far from neutral. Open interest has been rebuilding after a multi-month bleed, and that rebuild is driven by fresh long positions rather than quiet de-risking. Funding rates have pushed higher, which confirms that longs are paying shorts and leverage is skewed toward the upside. At the same time, liquidation data shows clusters of leveraged exposure sitting just under recent trading bands. That configuration is dangerous. It means that a clean breakout above resistance can fuel a squeeze higher, but any failure at the $3,100–$3,300 strip can flip quickly into a cascade of forced selling. In practice, this sets the market up for sharp, fast moves: either a momentum extension toward $3,500 if resistance breaks, or a violent flush back to $2,800–$2,700 if those crowded longs get taken out.

Hyperunit Whale Dynamics: $635M ETH-USD Position Near Break-Even Around $3,033

On top of broad positioning, one large player matters. A so-called “Hyperunit whale” controls about $635M in leveraged ETH-USD exposure that is hovering near break-even around $3,033, after recovering roughly $70M from the worst point. This wallet has history. It previously rotated about $5B from BTC into ETH between August and October 2025 and pocketed around $200M shorting BTC into the tariff-driven crash. When a trader of that size is sitting near flat, the next few hundred dollars on ETH-USD will dictate narrative. If price pushes cleanly toward $3,300–$3,500, that position swings into sizable profit and reinforces the story that “smart money” accumulated correctly. If ETH-USD rolls back under $3,000 and tests $2,800–$2,700 instead, the same book can become a forced-sell catalyst, amplifying a downside move as size is cut and leverage is reduced. That is why the $3,000–$3,300 band is not just a chart region but also a stress point for whale behaviour.

On-Chain Reality: Transactions, Addresses And Real Usage Outrunning Price

While the price marks time, Ethereum’s base layer is quietly printing new usage records. By December 31, the seven-day average daily transactions reached about 1.87M, beating the 1.61M peak from the NFT mania in May 2021 and the 1.73M spike seen in August 2025. Active addresses climbed to around 728,904, a level last seen in the spring of 2021, and in a single day the network added roughly 270,160 new addresses, the largest one-day increase in seven years. That combination—more transactions, more active addresses, more new wallets—signals renewed engagement across the ecosystem. At the same time, Ethereum-based DeFi keeps holding tens of billions of dollars in total value locked, while monthly NFT volumes remain in the billions, even after the speculative extremes of prior cycles cooled down. In other words, the chain is handling more real economic activity than it did at the last frenzy peak, yet ETH-USD still sits well below its all-time high of about $4,900. Historically, that kind of divergence between usage and price tends to close with price moving up, not fundamental activity collapsing.

Upgrade Cycle: Pectra, Fusaka, EIP-4844 And The 2026 Glamsterdam–Hegota Phase

Ethereum’s technical roadmap is a direct driver of the long-term ETH-USD valuation story. Recent years have brought a sequence of upgrades that materially change the economics and capacity of the network. The Merge to proof-of-stake in 2022 cut new ETH issuance by around 90% and enabled periods of net negative supply when fees are high. EIP-4844, or proto-danksharding, aggressively reduces data costs for layer-2 rollups, pushing down transaction costs and making L2 usage cheaper and more scalable. In 2025, two major stages—Pectra and Fusaka—further reshaped the environment. Pectra improved data throughput, enhanced wallet UX, and increased staking limits, supporting both usability and security. Fusaka simplified data availability and allowed more information to be processed without overloading individual nodes. For 2026, the roadmap calls for the Glamsterdam upgrade in the first half, targeting systemic performance and decentralization gains, followed by Hegota in the second half, focused on long-term sustainability and architectural optimization. Together with full danksharding down the line, these steps are aimed at pushing the system toward 100,000+ transactions per second and solidifying Ethereum as the main settlement engine in a multi-chain world.

Ecosystem Strength: Developers, Staking Base, Institutions And Competitive Moat

Ethereum’s competitive edge is not abstract marketing; it is quantifiable. The ecosystem sustains more than 4,000 monthly active developers, the largest builder base in crypto. Over $100B in value is staked, anchoring the proof-of-stake consensus with deep economic security. Major institutions—asset managers, banks, payment companies—have built products and infrastructure around ETH-USD, from spot and derivatives ETFs to staking-linked vehicles and enterprise blockchain applications. Most stablecoin volume, tokenized real-world assets, DeFi yield flows, and serious NFT liquidity still concentrate on Ethereum or its compatible rollups. Rivals like Solana, Cardano, and Avalanche have pockets of strength but do not yet match the combination of liquidity, tooling, regulatory familiarity, and developer density. That network effect is why many long-term models that project ETH-USD toward higher valuations assume Ethereum keeps its central role rather than being displaced.

Speculative Side Narratives: MUTM Presale, 42x Marketing And What It Really Means

One of the texts you supplied uses short-term weakness in ETH-USD around $2,970 to funnel attention toward Mutuum Finance (MUTM), a presale token priced at $0.04 in phase 7 with roughly $19.52M already raised. The marketing frame is clear. ETH is described as technically vulnerable, potentially falling up to 44% in 2026 if it fails to hold about $2,760, while MUTM is pitched as a high-structure, fee-generating DeFi protocol with overcollateralized loans, emergency funds, and an “automatic growth engine” that buys and redistributes tokens to stakers. A hypothetical path from a $0.06 launch price to above $1.50 is presented as the next natural step, implying about a 25x from launch and roughly 42x from early presale levels. This contrast is meant to push capital from a large, liquid, but slower asset (ETH-USD) into a thin, speculative new token. The sober view is simpler. ETH carries execution, regulatory, and market risk, but it already processes massive volumes and anchors an entire sector. MUTM, despite careful tokenomics on paper, carries all the classic early-stage risks: smart contract exposure, team and governance risk, liquidity traps, and exit risk once presale buyers are in profit. That is not inherently bad, but it is categorically different. For serious capital, ETH remains the core exposure; MUTM-style tokens are speculative side bets at best, not replacements.

Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP): Vitalik’s ZK Push Versus Ethereum’s Core Value Capture

Zero-knowledge technology sits at the centre of Ethereum’s scaling and privacy path, and that is why projects like Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) are being framed as “the next big crypto.” ZKP is already running a live on-chain presale auction that releases 200M tokens every 24 hours, with allocations based on proportional participation and results recorded on-chain. It also showcases delivered hardware “Proof Pods” and emphasizes a design aligned with current debates on fairness, privacy, and transparent rules, which Vitalik Buterin highlighted in his call to use ZK proofs in ranking systems and public infrastructure. The narrative link is obvious: if the co-founder of Ethereum is pushing ZK-based systems, then a token named ZKP with live auctions and hardware appears attractive. The essential point, however, is that ZK is a technology class, not a single-asset monopoly. Rollups, privacy layers, and ZK-based tools are built to sit on or next to Ethereum, and the main value capture over time still tends to accrue to ETH-USD as the settlement asset and gas token for that activity. A functioning ZK project can create returns, but Vitalik’s advocacy for ZK strengthens the long-term case for Ethereum itself at least as much as it supports any specific branded coin.

Long-Horizon Models: Path From $3,100 ETH-USD To A Potential $10,000 Target By 2030

A separate long-horizon framework you pasted lays out how ETH-USD might reach $10,000 by 2030. From early-2025 levels near $2,000, that move represents roughly a 5x, which equates to an annualized growth rate in the 30–40% range over five to six years. That pace is demanding but consistent with Ethereum’s previous cycle behaviour when sustained adoption and favourable macro conditions aligned. The argument stands on several pillars. Post-Merge, ETH issuance dropped around 90%, with regular net-deflationary periods when activity is high. DeFi on Ethereum keeps total value locked above roughly $50B; NFTs generate about $2B in monthly volumes. Developer activity remains the deepest in the sector, and institutional adoption is accelerating through ETFs, corporate allocations, and enterprise deployments. The upgrade roadmap promises throughput expansion, cost compression, and continued energy efficiency. Quantitative models like stock-to-flow variants, NVT ratios, and historical volatility bands are used to frame scenarios, though none are perfect. The core message is that if Ethereum continues to execute even at a reduced pace and macro conditions do not collapse, a 5x move by 2030 is aggressive but plausible.

Risk Map: Regulation, Technical Shocks, Competition And Macro Drag On ETH-USD

The same analysis is explicit on what can derail that path. Regulatory risk is not theoretical. Aggressive restrictions on staking, DeFi, or self-custody in major jurisdictions would suppress flows into ETH-USD and could reprice the asset sharply lower, even with strong technology. Technical risk is always present. A critical exploit in a widely used protocol, a consensus failure, or a flawed upgrade that undermines trust in settlement finality would hit pricing and adoption. Competition risk is real as well. If another smart-contract platform can combine security, performance, UX, and tooling to the point where developers migrate en masse, Ethereum’s network effects weaken. Macro risk cannot be ignored. A prolonged high-rate environment with shrinking liquidity would compress valuations across all risk assets, including Ethereum, regardless of its on-chain metrics. These factors define the boundaries of the bullish thesis. They do not cancel the upside, but they frame it as contingent rather than guaranteed.

Synthesis On Ethereum Price: Tactical Fragility, Structural Bullishness, Verdict On ETH-USD

Putting all the pieces together, the picture for ETH-USD is split between short-term noise and long-term strength. Right now, price trades around $3,000–$3,100, capped by a heavy $3,500 band and supported above $2,700 and especially $2,500. The intraday structure shows higher lows but also clashes with a $3,100 supply block and overbought lower-timeframe RSI, while derivatives data points to crowded longs and rising funding. The Hyperunit whale’s $635M position near $3,033 adds an additional pressure point that can either validate a breakout or magnify a reversal. On-chain data and the upgrade pipeline tell a different story. Ethereum is processing record transaction volumes, onboarding hundreds of thousands of new addresses in a day, and expanding its real economic footprint in DeFi, NFTs, stablecoins, and tokenized assets. Pectra, Fusaka, EIP-4844, and the coming Glamsterdam and Hegota upgrades push the system toward higher throughput and lower friction, while the proof-of-stake model continues to compress supply and support deflationary dynamics during busy periods. Competing narratives from presale tokens like MUTM and ZKP offer 20–40x marketing dreams but carry obvious project-level risks. Ethereum remains the core smart-contract asset that those systems will likely plug into or benchmark against. Based on all of this, the rational stance is clear. Over a three- to five-year horizon, ETH-USD is a buy for investors who can tolerate volatility and understand the execution and regulatory risks. Tactically, at around $3,100 with resistance overhead and leverage crowding the long side, the cleaner entries are on controlled pullbacks into $2,800–$2,700, with $2,500 as the level where the structural bullish view must be reassessed.