Ethereum (ETH) Price Surges Past $3,200 Milestone as Fusaka Upgrade Goes Live

Ethereum's network just got a major overhaul—and the market is responding with a rocket.

The Fusaka Effect

Price action doesn't lie. As the Fusaka upgrade activated across the network, Ether's valuation punched through the $3,200 barrier. That's not just a number; it's a vote of confidence from the entire digital asset ecosystem in Ethereum's evolving roadmap.

Beyond the Price Tag

Forget the speculative frenzy for a second. This surge is underpinned by tangible network evolution. Upgrades like Fusaka aren't marketing fluff—they're core protocol improvements designed to enhance scalability, security, or efficiency. The market is simply pricing in that reduced friction and increased utility.

It's the classic tech play: build something better, and value flows to it. While traditional finance is busy debating quarterly earnings, crypto networks upgrade in real-time, and their native assets reprice accordingly. A cynic might say it's the only sector where a 'software update' can move billions in market cap overnight—and they wouldn't be wrong.

The takeaway? Ethereum continues to execute. When the foundation gets stronger, the house built on it becomes more valuable. The climb to $3,200 is just the first chapter of this upgrade's story.

TLDR

• Ethereum activated its Fusaka upgrade on Wednesday at block height 18,200,000, marking the network’s second major upgrade of 2025
• ETH price climbed 4.3% to $3,200 following the upgrade, with trading volume increasing from $28.2 billion to $32 billion in roughly six hours
• The upgrade introduces PeerDAS, a data availability system that allows nodes to store only a fraction of blob data and expands blob throughput by approximately eight times
• Vitalik Buterin stated that PeerDAS represents the realization of sharding, a goal for Ethereum since 2015
• Price analysts attribute the surge to accumulation from wallets holding 1,000-10,000 ETH, with the cryptocurrency trading between $3,150 and $3,210 after activation

Ethereum completed its Fusaka upgrade on Wednesday, sending the cryptocurrency’s price higher in the hours following the network change. The upgrade went live at block height 18,200,000 in late afternoon.

ETH price traded between $3,150 and $3,210 in the hours after Fusaka activated. The cryptocurrency climbed steadily through Wednesday evening and past midnight early Thursday. At time of reporting, ETH was up 4.3% on the day to $3,200, according to CoinGecko data.

Trading volume increased from $28.2 billion to $32 billion over a roughly six-hour period following the upgrade. Early analysis from Santiment attributed the price movement to accumulation from wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 ETH.

The Fusaka upgrade represents Ethereum’s second major network change in 2025. Test deployments took place across the Holesky, Sepolia, and Hoodi test networks throughout October. Client teams completed final readiness checks earlier this week before the mainnet activation.

Data Availability Changes

The upgrade introduces PeerDAS, a data availability sampling system that changes how nodes handle posted blob data. Under PeerDAS, each node stores only a fraction of the blob data rather than every byte.

The system reduces bandwidth and storage requirements for nodes. It expands the network’s blob throughput capacity by approximately eight times compared to previous limits.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin described PeerDAS as the realization of sharding. “Sharding has been a dream for ethereum since 2015, and data availability sampling since 2017, and now we have it,” Buterin wrote.

PeerDAS in Fusaka is significant because it literally is sharding.

Ethereum is coming to consensus on blocks without requiring any single node to see more than a tiny fraction of the data. And this is robust to 51% attacks – it's client-side probabilistic verification, not… pic.twitter.com/OK81xBteER

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 3, 2025

Blockscout, an open-source block explorer, stated the upgrade aligns Ethereum’s base LAYER with activity levels already happening across its layer-2 ecosystem. The organization noted signs of preparation for higher data throughput across indexed L2 networks ahead of activation.

Network Configuration Updates

Fusaka enables Blob-Parameter-Only configuration changes. This feature allows clients to raise blob capacity without requiring a full hard fork, according to Ethereum’s official roadmap.

The upgrade includes base fee changes for blobs. These changes prevent blob fees from collapsing when gas prices rise. Gas prices cover the cost of running transactions and smart contract logic on Ethereum.

Several rollups increased the regularity of state-root submissions and adjusted block intervals ahead of the upgrade. Blockscout described the trend as incremental but noticeable, suggesting preparation for increased capacity and more predictable throughput.

The upgrade adds transaction improvements that developers said could help reduce costs. These changes also support decentralization as network activity grows.

$ETH back above the MA50.

Very strong performance. pic.twitter.com/zPh2Vf9s0d

— crypto Rover (@cryptorover) December 4, 2025

ETH currently faces resistance NEAR the $3,250 level. The price is trading above the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average and above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent move from $2,718 to $3,239.