Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH holds $2,200 support despite Pectra's issues on Sepolia testnet

Ethereum price today: $2,240

• The Ethereum Pectra upgrade has returned to normal operation on the Sepolia testnet after developers fixed bugs in its deposit contract.
• Developers assured users that the issues don't affect Pectra's mainnet deployment.
• ETH is struggling to hold the $2,200 support level as the Stoch hits the oversold region.

Ethereum (ETH) is up on Wednesday after developers fixed issues with the Pectra upgrade's deployment on the Sepolia testnet. The top altcoin aims to hold the $2,200 support level amid negative sentiments from Pectra's failure on testnets.

Ethereum faces issues with Pectra deployment on Sepolia

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia testnet — an environment for testing features before full-scale deployment — has returned to normal operation after encountering challenges.

Tim Beiko, who coordinates Ethereum core developers meetings, stated in a blog post that the upgrade on Sepolia originated from a bug in its deposit contract that prevented execution layer (EL) clients from including transactions in blocks. However, developers quickly coordinated to resolve the problem.

"We've identified and deployed a fix for the Sepolia deposit contract issue found earlier today," wrote Beiko in an X post.

This marks the second issue that Pectra has encountered on testnets in less than two weeks. Pectra failed to finalize on the Holesky testnet last week due to configuration issues with EL clients.

While Pectra's recent testnet challenges sparked concerns among Ethereum community members, developers have assured users that the issues are only peculiar to testnets.

"This issue is due to Sepolia's configuration and could not occur on the Ethereum mainnet," added Beiko.

Sepolia is the last testnet upgrade before Pectra's mainnet deployment, which developers had initially slated for April. Recent issues make it unclear whether developers would proceed with Pectra's initial schedule.

Pectra will introduce several improvements to Ethereum, including account abstraction features like sponsored transactions, payment of gas fees with ERC-20 tokens and improved wallet recovery options.

Pectra will also enable stakers to consolidate their resources by increasing the maximum staking balance per node from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH struggles to hold $2,200 support

Ethereum experienced $44.63 million in futures liquidations in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data. The total amount of liquidated long and short positions accounted for $20.02 million and $24.61 million, respectively.

ETH saw a rejection near the lower boundary of an ascending channel earlier in the week and has struggled to hold the support level near $2,200.

ETH/USDT weekly chart

If ETH reclaims the channel's lower boundary, it could retest the critical resistance near $2,850.

However, a weekly candlestick close below $2,200 could send ETH to find support near $1,500.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is below its neutral level, while the Stochastic Oscillator (Stoch) has crossed into the oversold region. This indicates dominant bearish momentum and signs of potential sellers' exhaustion.