‘Revenge of the ETH’ — Is Ethereum’s 9% jump the start of something big?

Despite being beaten off the starting line by Solana and other altcoins, some traders now believe Ethereum is primed for a move.

After being drastically outperformed by Solana

for the past three months, the price of Ether

ETH

$2,396   suddenly spiked 8.9% in the last 24 hours, leading to some bullish sentiment returning to Ethereum.

“The revenge of the ETH is starting,” wrote Jordi Alexander, the chief investment officer at Selini Capital, in a Dec. 27 post to X (formerly Twitter).

Alexander pointed to a recent rally across several altcoins and Michael Saylor buying another $615 million worth of Bitcoin on Dec. 26 as solid foundations for ETH to make an upside move over the next few weeks.

“The risk/reward on Ether is so compelling here, that I see a liquidity black hole now forming in January,” he added.

Pseudonymous trader Pentoshi added his bullish target for Ether, posting a semi-cryptic chart to X with an approximate price target of $3,485.

“Slowly, then all at once,” he added.

The conflict between community members from the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems reached a fever pitch over the last few weeks.

While Ether has gained 102% year-to-date, its price performance has been dwarfed by that of Solana, which has posted a whopping 951% gain since the beginning of this year, per TradingView data.

Ether’s 102% gain was dwarfed by Solana’s staggering 951% year-to-date rally. Source: TradingView

This outsized price performance, along with a tidal wave of relative on-chain activity, led many to assert that the networks’ lower fees and faster settlement times made it the superior blockchain when compared to Ethereum.

On the other hand, Ethereum backers claimed that the networks’ architecture was more suited to larger entities conducting business on-chain and pointed to layer-2 scaling solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum as examples of cheaper fees on ETH.

At the time of publication, ETH is changing hands for $2,417, up 8.9% in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Solana has taken a breather from its recent upward tear, trading at $104 — a loss of 4.2% in the last day.