By Samuel Indyk

Investing.com – An upcoming upgrade on the network has helped the cryptocurrency outperform in the latest week, despite the launch of the first ETF on October 19th.

Ethereum developers will begin the Altair Upgrade on Wednesday. It is another step to help the cryptocurrency move away from proof of work towards proof-of–stake once Ethereum 2.0 is live. Ethereum currently operates as a proof of work network. This means that miners can process transactions on its blockchain.

The full launch of Ethereum 2.0 is anticipated for next year.

Because of the huge computing power needed to perform the calculations, proof-of-work can be a very power-intensive validation method.

The alternative to proof-ofstake is a method that addresses the concerns about the impact of cryptocurrencies on the environment and how they are used. The proof-of-stake method allows a person to mine and validate transactions based on how many coins they own. This means that the miner can have more power than they possess.

Institutional adoption has been limited by the environmental issues surrounding cryptocurrency mining. Tesla (NASDAQ) CEO Elon Musso said earlier in the year that the automaker would no longer accept Bitcoin for payment. This was due to concerns about both mining and transactional impacts. Musk later stated that Tesla will likely resume accepting Bitcoin payments at some point.

Ethereum surpasses expectations

Ethereum has seen a 6% increase in value over the week to compare with Bitcoin’s 2.5% drop prior to the upgrade. Year-to-date, Ethereum is up over 470% compared to Bitcoin’s 115% gain.

This performance in Ethereum is due to a surge in popularity of Decentralised Finance applications (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens, (NFTs), over the past year.