The ETH/USD closed at 1936.97 after placing a high of 1938.05 and a low of 1769.49. Ethereum prices extended their gains and rose for the fourth consecutive session on Wednesday to reach above the $1900 level. Ethereum remained positive on Wednesday, following the BITCOIN trend that tried to touch the $60,000 level but faced rejection. Both of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies by market cap were rising towards their highest levels amid the increased popularity of cryptocurrency in the market.

Ethereum has been benefitting lately over the upcoming improvement in its network through Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559. The new proposal has caused as much excitement as fear and panic as it is set to bundle together with upgrade “London” in July. The EIP-1559 will change the gas fee structure in the Ethereum network, and it has also been labeled as Ethereum’s scarcity engine as it would burn the Ether used in transaction fees and make the cryptocurrency deflationary that will eventually raise its value.

Another reason behind the recent hike in Ethereum prices could be the growing popularity of NFTs. As they have been trending lately, more creators and users want to benefit from them, and if they use Ethereum for this purpose, it would be costly for them due to its high gas fees. However, the Ethereum software solutions provider ConsenSys announced a new non-fungible token platform called Palm that will aim to compete with the market-dominant Flow. Palm promises 9% efficiency over current proof-of-work networks.Palm will exist as an Ethereum sidechain that will be fully interoperable with the main Ethereum network; however, the project intends to transition to Layer 2 solutions for even faster transactions. This alternative platform to Ethereum could hurt ETH prices. Furthermore, a decentralized lending and borrowing protocol, Aave, has announced this week that it will build a new DeFi service on Polygon. Polygon will also be an Ethereum sidechain that will help to reduce the exorbitant gas fees.