The successful rollout of the Shapella upgrade on Ethereum has led to a surge in ether and other alternative cryptocurrencies, fueling the "alt season" narrative on Crypto Twitter. Ether gained over 10% in the past 24 hours, trading at 11-month highs above $2,120 during Asian trading hours. The Shapella upgrade allowed users to stake and unstake tokens from the network at will, improving the network's overall outlook. Governance tokens of liquid staking protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool saw outsized gains, with Lido's staked ether tokens (STETH) climbing into the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization of $12 billion. The ability for users to withdraw their tokens will support healthy competition across platforms and providers, according to Valerie Tetu, head of strategy at Lido Finance. Dogecoin also gained for the second-straight day, potentially due to eToro's announcement that it would offer crypto trading directly from Twitter. Cardano surged nearly 9% on the back of fundamental growth in the Cardano network, such as wider support for decentralized application development. Some market observers expect the rally to continue over the next few weeks.

(By Shaurya Malwa)