Ethereum Slips Below $4,000 as Co-Founder Moves Millions to Kraken

Ethereum had a shaky day. The price of $ETH briefly dipped below the $4,000 mark before stabilizing around the same level.

At press time, CoinMarketCap data shows Ethereum trading at $4,010, down 2.1% over the past 24 hours with a market cap of $482 billion. Trading volume stands at $17.8 billion, reflecting heightened activity as the market digests new wallet movements.

Jeffrey Wilcke Transfers Millions in ETH

One wallet is drawing attention. Blockchain data points to Ethereum co-founder Jeffrey Wilcke as the likely owner.

Earlier today, this wallet deposited 1,500 ETH (≈$5.99M) into the exchange Kraken. That comes on top of last week’s activity, where a total of 2,500 ETH (≈$10.3M) was transferred at an average price of $4,124.

Despite these outflows, the wallet still holds 2,058 ETH (≈$8.23M). While Wilcke has been relatively quiet in recent years compared to other Ethereum co-founders, movements of this size tend to spark speculation. Some interpret them as profit-taking; others see them as simple liquidity management.

Source: Spot On Chain

A wallet likely belonging to Jeffrey Wilcke—the co-founder of #Ethereum—has just deposited 1,500 $ETH ($5.99M) into #Kraken.

Over the past week, this wallet has transferred a total of 2,500 $ETH ($10.3M) to Kraken at an average price of $4,124, and currently holds 2,058 $ETH… pic.twitter.com/iLzBWj5STM

— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) September 25, 2025

Vitalik Buterin on Fusaka and PeerDAS

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s most vocal co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has been laying out the roadmap for scaling. His latest comments focus on Fusaka, an upgrade designed to supercharge Ethereum’s data availability.

The centerpiece is PeerDAS, a feature that allows nodes to verify and reconstruct blocks without holding full data. In simple terms, PeerDAS lets the network scale by ensuring data availability without overwhelming individual nodes.

“Blob counts will rise conservatively at first. PeerDAS is the key to L2, and eventually L1, scaling,” Buterin wrote.

Source: Vitalik on X

Fusaka will fix this.

But also, safety first is of the utmost importance for Fusaka. The core feature, PeerDAS, is trying to do something pretty unprecedented: have a live blockchain that does not require any single node to download the full data.

The way PeerDAS works is that… https://t.co/go6QsqjaFC

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 24, 2025

How PeerDAS Works

The concept breaks traditional assumptions. Normally, a blockchain node downloads full data to verify blocks. PeerDAS changes that.

Instead, each node requests only a few “chunks”. By verifying these chunks, the node can probabilistically confirm whether more than 50% of the block’s data is available. If that condition is met, the node can use erasure coding to reconstruct the rest.

This drastically reduces the storage burden on individual nodes, while keeping the system secure and trustless.

Two Key Exceptions

In its first release, Fusaka still requires full block data in two cases:

1. Initial broadcasting, when a block is first shared across the network.

2. Reconstruction, if a publisher submits 50% ≤ p < 100% of a block.

Even then, the system doesn’t rely on a trusted actor. As Buterin explained, only one honest node needs to perform this task. Even if 100 others are dishonest, the protocol bypasses them. Different nodes can perform this function for different blocks, keeping the system decentralized.

Future Developments As Buterin Exposed

Buterin emphasized that this is new and unprecedented tech. Core developers are taking a cautious approach despite years of research.

That’s why blob counts, the amount of extra data Ethereum processes, will scale slowly at first. Over time, the limits will rise more aggressively as confidence grows.

The roadmap includes cell-level messaging and distributed block building, which would eventually decentralize even the broadcasting and reconstruction tasks.

Ultimately, Fusaka is designed as the backbone for L2 scaling today and L1 scaling in the future, once Ethereum raises its gas limit and starts pushing execution data into blobs.

The combination of Wilcke’s transfers and Buterin’s scaling roadmap paints a mixed picture for Ethereum. On one hand, large co-founder sell-offs often raise concerns about confidence. On the other hand, the Fusaka upgrade reinforces Ethereum’s commitment to long-term scaling.

Investors are watching closely. The $4,000 level has become a key psychological line for ETH traders. Repeated dips below could trigger further selling pressure. But sustained momentum above it could signal resilience, especially with major upgrades on the horizon.

Ethereum sits at a critical juncture. Price action reflects both near-term selling pressure and long-term optimism. Jeffrey Wilcke’s multi-million-dollar transfers highlight the scale of liquidity moving through exchanges. Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin’s Fusaka vision outlines a future where Ethereum nodes scale efficiently without centralizing.

The market’s verdict is still forming. For now, ETH holds steady near $4,000, a battleground between profit-takers and believers in the next phase of Ethereum’s evolution.

Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.

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