Ethereum’s next hard fork, Fusaka, is scheduled for 3 December 2025. The Thursday All Core Developers call officially announced the mainnet activation time at slot 13,164,544, around 21:49 UTC. As of 1 Nov 2025, ETH is trading near $3,858 after an intraday range of approximately $3,830 to $3,869. The core price question is simple: Will the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade push ETH higher?
What Will Ethereum Fusaka Upgrade Do to Rollups, Fee Burn, and Price?
The focus of Ethereum’s upcoming hard fork Fusaka is PeerDAS (EIP-7594), a data-availability sampling scheme which is expected to increase the network’s capacity to host rollups by enabling nodes to attest to parts of blob data instead of the entire payload. This should improve data availability capacity and reduce validator bandwidth requirements, paving the way for higher rollup throughput and lower unit cost. This is great for network usage but not inherently bullish for price.
We would expect to see some market optimism near the time of the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade, with choppy trading leading into a classic buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news market action. Medium-term Ethereum price performance hinges on whether PeerDAS capacity is meaningfully utilized. In the event of genuine adoption, leading to heavier blob usage, the associated stronger burn should result in medium-term tailwinds. In the event of continued weak utilization, fee compression will take over, and we would expect ETH to continue trading in line with broader crypto rather than outperforming on the back of Fusaka.
How ETH Trades Around Major Upgrades? A Data-Backed Look
Major upgrades have delivered substantial technical progress and mixed short-term price reactions. The following chart illustrates ETH’s trading performance around major upgrades, represented by the percentage change from 7 days before the upgrade date (T-7 close) to 7 days after (T+7 close).
Chart 1: Ethereum Price performance around major upgrades, provided by Mehraneh Hosseni
Merge — September 2022
The switch to proof-of-stake reduced new ETH issuance by approximately 90% and energy consumption by 99.95%. This structural change strengthened Ethereum’s monetary and environmental profile. In terms of price, however, the short-term performance was not considerable in a larger bear market. In the T-7 to T+7 period, ETH dropped 23.1%, suggesting that macro and positioning can still drive the early weeks following go-live, even as fundamentals strengthen.
Shapella — April 2023
Allowing withdrawals provided a clean de-risking signal. Exits were orderly, quickly absorbed by new deposits, with multiple datasets showing deposits outstripping withdrawals in the days following unlock. Exchange flows were contained, and ETH rose 12.4% over the T-7 to T+7 window, a model for how “unlock” events can boost confidence rather than prompt sustained selling.
Dencun — March 2024
Proto-danksharding exported rollup data to blobspace and compressed huge Layer-2 fees. In fact, EIP-4844 was designed to directly enable by reducing L2 data costs, not L1 fees. That technical win for rollups notwithstanding, the tape exuded a “buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news” feel intraday. The ETH price declined 11.5% in the T-7 to T+7 window, highlighting both that fee compression is bad for L1 burn unless activity widens materially and that near-term tape moves often have more to do with positioning than fundamentals.
Chart 2: ETH/USDT weekly chart, provided by Mehraneh Hosseni
What Happened Last Time Ethereum Cut L2 Data Costs?
When Dencun/EIP-4844 first introduced blob space in March 2024, L2 posting costs plummeted, and activity rushed into blobs. By about 85–150 days after the fork, we saw that analytics had hundreds of thousands of blobs posted, only ~1,389 ETH burned through blob transactions, and significantly lower L2 data costs. This led to better UX but compressed L1 fees and burn, muting ETH’s reflexive price tailwind despite the technical win. PeerDAS uses the exact mechanism, making this blueprint applicable to the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade. More data-availability capacity lowers per-unit costs, so any price impact will come from volume growth outpacing unit-fee declines.
ETH Broke Above $3,728 Resistance on Fusaka Confirmation, then Stalled
Following confirmation by developers on the Oct 30 ACDC consensus-layer call that Ethereum Fusaka upgrade is set to go live on Dec 3, 2025, ETH has broken above the upper boundary of the previous downward channel at $3,728 in a spike-style breakout. Price then entered an upward channel, rising to around $3,859. ETH broke through the bottom of its rising channel on Oct 31, which led the ETH into a sideways trading range where it consolidated between $3,801 support and $3,902 resistance. The most likely near-term outcome remains fluctuation between these levels until a significant breakout creates a new trend.
Chart 3: ETH/USDT M15 chart, analyzed by Mehraneh Hosseni
Price Outlook into and after December 3, 2025
Up to the launch date, we can expect to see buy-the-rumor action and increased volatility. Right after the activation, a mixed or sell-the-news reaction is also possible, similar to what we saw with Dencun. The 3–6 month outcome will depend on whether the PeerDAS-powered capacity is filled. If PeerDAS clearly increases blob usage and layer-two throughput, leading to higher burn, then ETH will have a persistent tailwind. If capacity grows but demand lags, ETH will most likely trade with a wider crypto beta and not outperform solely on the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade.
