Ethereum's true story only begins after breaking through the triangle pattern. To understand its future price trend, we need to analyze it from three dimensions: technological upgrades, ecological applications, and market cycles.

Wall Street's predictions for 2030 are quite heated. Standard Chartered is more conservative, estimating $8,000-$12,000; Bernstein is more aggressive, predicting $15,000; and Ark Invest outright throws out numbers like $20,000-$30,000. These differences essentially reflect varying judgments on the future development path of the Ethereum ecosystem.

**Technological upgrades in 2026 are a watershed moment**

The Glamsterdam upgrade in the first half of the year mainly addressed MEV (Miner Extractable Value) fairness — in simple terms, making transaction execution more orderly. By the end of the year, the Hegota upgrade will bring Verkle trees onto the stage, directly lowering the threshold for node operation, which can enhance network decentralization.

But there's a pattern here: history shows that before upgrades, people hype expectations; after upgrades, they start selling the facts. Before the Merge upgrade in 2022, ETH rose 80%, but after implementation, it fell back 30%. So whether the 2026 upgrade can truly push prices higher depends on whether the actual effects exceed expectations.

**Ecological applications are the real engine**

Traditional applications like DeFi and NFTs have already slowed in growth. But RWA (Real-World Asset Tokenization) is emerging as a new engine, and the potential in this area has yet to be fully unleashed.