The price of Ethereum has risen above the $500 barrier for the first time since 2018. The last time the cryptocurrency was above $500 was July 2018.

Ethereum has been the talk of the town in recent months as the crypto community anticipates the release of Ethereum 2.0, a massive upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to solve long standing scalability issues plaguing the Ethereum network. But while we wait for this upgrade, Ethereum’s price has kept rising.

$ETH > $500 pic.twitter.com/gX9cBADRa5

— Cryptowatch (@cryptowat_ch) November 20, 2020

“Ethereum has the network, it has the attention and now we are starting to see the true price discovery start,” Charles Storry, co-founder of PhutureDAO, told Decrypt.

This recent price increase adds to solid growth over the last month, with Ethereum’s price having risen from $375 on October 20, 2020. What’s more, Ethereum began the year at just $130. That means this represents a 33% increase in the last month, and a 284% gain on the year so far.

But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Ethereum. On January 13, 2018, Ethereum hit its all-time high of $1,344. What followed was a major drop in price which saw Bitcoin’s chief cryptocurrency rival fell to $370 in less than three months.

But with a 33% gain in just the last month, it’s clear that Ethereum is enjoying a considerable good run of its own. Anticipation over Ethereum 2.0 is certainly playing a role, but there are many other possible reasons for this recent price increase.

“Without looking at the transaction data, price action could be driven by many reasons. Rotation from Bitcoin into Ether from Bitcoin holders, bullishness around crypto in general, or perhaps conversion of some of the funds previously stuck in dollar/ETH pairs in Uniswap back into ETH,” Kirill Kutakov, co-founder of Stakewise, told Decrypt.

But it still has a long way to go if it wants to break a new all-time high.