The cryptocurrency market, just like every other financial market right now, is witnessing a massive-sell off.
Most of the largest cryptos by market cap are seeing double-digit losses with the current situation also highlighting the fundamental flaws with the Ethereum network, despite several upgrades through the years to make the network faster.
The Ethereum network at the time of writing is evidently under stress with users having to wait longer for transactions to be processed. At the same time, with nearly everyone trying to get their transactions confirmed, miners are claiming more ETH in transaction fees, albeit the USD value of these coins dropping sharply.
According to data from Etherscan, the average transaction confirmation time for the Ethereum network hit as high as 2680 seconds (44 minutes) and also 1223 secs (20 min). These numbers are alarming considering the same transaction would be settled at roughly a 7 secs average confirmation time less than 24 hours ago.
#ETH network congestion. Average time for confirmations 2680 seconds (44 minutes) https://t.co/a2U8vF3Q9P pic.twitter.com/nPENzWA4yH
— CZ Binance ??? (@cz_binance) March 12, 2020
The current network situation is also likely affecting ETH and ERC-20 deposits and withdrawals on exchanges, although Bithumb is the only platform to report being affected at the time of writing.
Due to a temporary network issue, withdrawals and deposits of #ETH and #ERC20 tokens are currently being delayed.
Sorry for your inconvenience and appreciate your understanding
For more details >> https://t.co/tnnWweiBWc pic.twitter.com/93jOJj0CRm
— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) March 12, 2020
With Ethereum’s primary proposition being to provide infrastructure for the development of decentralized applications (dApps), the current situation highlights the fact that the network still needs a lot of improvement to match its promise.
A possible switch of the network’s consensus mechanism to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) has been both criticized and heralded as the way forward for Ethereum 2.0, even though at this time, an implementation seems perhaps a bit far away.
