The price of Ethereum's native coin, ether, has increased by 2.75% over the past five hours to $1,970 following the completion of the Shapella upgrade, Ethereum's first significant upgrade since The Merge. The upgrade allows staked ether to be withdrawn from the network for the first time, and over 822,000 ether worth around $1.6 billion is pending withdrawal. Despite the potential sell-side pressure, ether volumes have increased as the price approaches pre-Merge highs, with volumes of the most popular trading pair, ETH/USDT on Binance, topping $1.28 billion in the past 24 hours. The three most-prominent governance tokens for liquid staking protocols, Lido DAO, Rocket Pool, and Frax Ether, have all jumped 5.2% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

(By Adam Morgan McCarthy)