Ethereum’s Fusaka Fork and Circle’s Arc Testnet Reshape Crypto Market

The crypto market slipped 0.93% over the past 24 hours, continuing a volatile 30-day pattern marked by a 1.63% decline. The latest drop reflects renewed unease surrounding Federal Reserve policy and tightening liquidity conditions, which overshadowed optimism from recent ETF launches.

Crypto Market Extends Losses Amid Fed Liquidity Concerns

Investor sentiment weakened as concerns about the Fed’s ongoing quantitative tightening and stress in the repo market dampened risk appetite. These liquidity fears have sparked cautious trading across major digital assets.

In the meantime, the launching of a number of new ETFs that were related to Solana (SOL), Hedera (HBAR), and Litecoin (LTC) introduced short-term volatility. The profit-taking resulted in a mixed demand of these funds and further straining prices.

BTC hovered near $113,000, showing modest stability after recent fluctuations. ETH maintained support around $4,000, suggesting resilience despite broader market weakness.

Ethereum’s Fusaka Fork Moves Closer to Mainnet Launch

In the crypto market today, the much-anticipated Ethereum Fusaka upgrade successfully launched on its last testnet, Hoodi. This is a milestone that will be a step towards its full rollout, that is planned to occur on December 3.

The upgrade will provide the much-needed improvements on scalability and security within the Ethereum network.

Fusaka also incorporates some Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). EIP-7594, which brings Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS), is one of the biggest extensions. Such a change allows validators to read smaller data chunks on Layer 2 networks rather than complete data blocks. The efficiency and performance of node operators will be expected to be improved.

Other proposals EIP-7825 and EIP-7935 are also aimed at raising the gas limits of the Ethereum and optimizing its efficiency. These are initial stages of supporting parallel implementation, when it will be possible to have several smart contracts running at the same time.

Additional EIPs in this update also improve support of zero-knowledge rollups, which further improves the ability of Ethereum to process high amounts of transactions. The upgrade focuses on the scalability aspect of the blockchain trilemma, a phrase coined by co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin to refer to the struggle of the scalability, decentralization and security of a blockchain at the same time.

Polymarket Nears U.S. Trading Comeback

Polymarket, a prediction platform, is reportedly intending to resume trading its operations in the United States in weeks. Due to sources quoted in a Bloomberg report , the relaunch will start with a limited number of trading options with sports betting as the primary specialization.

This is following the release of a no-action letter by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to a crypto derivatives exchange Polymarket had acquired. The letter was effective in creating a regulatory avenue to the reentry of the platform into the US market.

CEO Shayne Coplan said the developments preconditioned Polymarket to act in the U.S. once more. On Tuesday, the site had a waitlist of interested users in the U.S., indicating the platform would be reinstated shortly. The potential future valuation of the company is as much as 10 billion dollars as per industry speculation after a funding round of up to 200 million earlier in the year.

Circle Unveils Arc Testnet with Major Institutional Backing

Circle has introduced the public testnet of Arc blockchain, which attracted the attention of more than 100 financial institutions. Arc is Circle open Layer-1 blockchain, which is aimed at connecting the world of traditional financial infrastructure with onchain operations.

Major institutions, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and State Street are some of the participants. The network supports predictable charges, instant transaction completion, and optional privacy, which are supported by a stablecoin, USDC by the company, circle.

According to the comments of the CEO of the Circle Jeremy Allaire, the rollout was a significant step toward introducing billions of users and trillions of assets into blockchain-based financial systems.