Genesis wallets from Ethereum’s very beginning on Monday suddenly came to life after nearly 10 years of inactivity. In total, they moved 1,140 Ether tokens – worth approximately $2.9 million. Those wallets that start with address “0x27” and “0x7f” all got their coins 10 years ago. This was around the launch of Ethereum in 2015, at the time a proof-of-work blockchain.
Ethereum’s original proof of work model was quite similar to Bitcoin’s, with block rewards and proof of work mining. However, in September 2022, Ethereum transitioned to a proof-of-stake mechanism during the Merge, a move designed to reduce the network's energy consumption.
Ether’s value has skyrocketed almost 90,000% in the ten years since these wallets got their first coins. This recent surge of new wallets activated is a trend we have seen on the Bitcoin network.
As Cointelegraph reported last week, three Bitcoin wallets that have been inactive for 14 years suddenly came to life — moving billions of dollars in assets on Friday. In one of the big crypto price movements in early 2024, dormant Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallets likewise reawakened to transfer coins valued at close to $44 million at the time.
The movement of these previously inactive Ethereum Genesis wallets, also known as Frontier wallets, has sparked discussion within the cryptocurrency community. This flurry of activity comes at the same time that Ethereum co-founder and researcher Vitalik Buterin suggests new advancements in the pipeline for the Ethereum ecosystem.
The gas cap for individual transactions in Buterin’s proposal is 16.77 million.
By implementing this limit, Ethereum can enhance its resilience against certain DoS vectors, improve network stability, and provide more predictability to transaction processing costs.
Developers behind Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, recently implemented a significant upgrade on May 7. Since that time, Ether’s price has exploded from $1,812 to $2,540, as CoinMarketCap shows it. Furthermore, TradFi institutions are reportedly building Ethereum Layer-2 solutions to tokenize trillions in Real-World Assets (RWAs), indicating growing institutional interest in the Ethereum ecosystem.
