Ethereum’s rapidly growing popularity has become the most talked about topic in cryptocurrency ecosystem. It particularly came under spotlight when it crossed the $1 billion mark in March this year, making several cryptocurrency exchanges to announce their support for ether trading.

The market cap of Ethereum’s has once again surpassed the $1 billion mark as ether price recently found upward momentum and currently trades at $14.45 levels. Finance Magnates attributes this to the success of the DAO crowdfunding drive.

Speaking with EconoTimes, Aurélien Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, said that the surge seen earlier in Ethereum’s market cap was partially due to some concerns about the future of bitcoin, which have been recently addressed following the announcement of the upcoming SegWit and Lightning network upgrades that will improve the scalability of bitcoin. He attributed the subsequent drop in the market cap to a correction to an “overly excited market”.

“If you consider that the market even grew anywhere near 1 billion in less than a year since it was released that is very impressive. We are still very bullish about Ethereum and believe ether's value will increase in the long term”, Menant added.

ETH/USD

Ether price has been consistently moving upwards since the beginning of the week. From a low of $9.98 on Monday, the pair rose to a high of $14.58 levels today. ETH/USD faces major resistance at 15.20 levels and consistent break above could see the pair reaching 19.15 levels and then 21 levels. On the flipside, support is to be found at $12.50 levels and a break below could drag the pair to 11.60 levels and then to 9.90 levels.

In an interview, Jason Cassidy, Chief Communications Officer at Emercoin, told EconoTimes:

“Ethereum is unproven currently so while it has a lot of hype around it and some interesting applications being developed on top of it, the jury is still out. That being said, if any alternative blockchain has a shot at holding that coveted #2 position, it is Ethereum”.

Ether Nodes

Last week, Consensys stated in a press release that the number of Ethereum full nodes surpassed the number of Bitcoin full nodes. According to latest statistics, total ether nodes stand at 6979, as compared to 5598 bitcoin nodes, at the time of writing.

The DAO crowdsale

The DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, leverages smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to enable anyone, anywhere in the world to create their own autonomous organization. The DAO crowdsale has broken all records already as it has raised over $160 million so far and still has 8 days to go.

As The DAO only accepts ETH as investment, all those interested in the project needed to buy ether to participate, which is pushing the price upwards, Finance Magnates noted. The DAO currently holds more than 11 million ETH, out of the 80 million ETH in existence – a massive 13.75% of the total circulation.