Two Ethereum Genesis Wallets Wake, Move $2.9M ETH

Two Ethereum wallets dormant for nearly a decade were activated on Monday, moving a combined 1,140 Ether tokens worth nearly $2.9 million.

The two wallets — one starting in “0x27” and the other “0x7f” — were created 3,630 days ago, on July 30, 2015. That date marked the mainnet launch of the Ethereum blockchain, a phase called “Frontier” in the history of the ecosystem. Both wallets received their inicial Ether (ETH) from transactions labeled as “GENESIS” on Etherscan, indicating they were funded at launch.

Ethereum debuted in 2015 as a proof-of-work blockchain, featuring traditional mining and block rewards akin to the Bitcoin network. It transitioned to a proof-of-stake mechanism in September 2022 during The Merge, a move aimed at reducing the energy usage required to run the network.

According to TradingView, ETH has appreciated 89,450% in the nearly 10 years that the wallets have remained dormant.

Crypto watchers have seen a wave of dormant whale wallets reawakening lately. On Friday, three Bitcoin (BTC) wallets that had been dormant for 14 years awakened and transferred billions of dollars in funds.

In 2024, dormant Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallets reawakened to transfer coins worth nearly $44 million at the time.

Related: Ethereum’s comeback strategy — Foundation exec reveals what’s next

Ethereum developments include Pectra upgrade, gas cap

Ethereum’s latest upgrade, called Pectra, has brought smart accounts, improved scalability, and higher staking limits to its ecosystem. Ethereum developers initiated the upgrade on May 7, and since then, the price of ETH has risen to $2,540 from $1,812, according to CoinMarketCap.

Vitalik Buterin has submitted further developments for the ecosystem. On Sunday, the Ethereum co-founder and researcher Toni Wahrstätter issued a proposal that contains a gas cap of 16.77 million for individual transactions.

According to the authors, this would increase Ethereum’s performance and security. “By implementing this limit, Ethereum can enhance its resilience against certain DoS vectors, improve network stability, and provide more predictability to transaction processing costs.”

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