This week, Ethereum surged 21% higher, the second-largest cryptocurrency market close to an all-time high.

Following bitcoin's all-time high (ATH) on Wednesday, ethereum, the second-largest crypto currency by market capitalization, is approaching its own ATH. The last time the crypto asset achieved an all-time high was on May 12, which was five months ago.

In just 30 days, Ethereum has grown by 46 percent and now has a market cap of half a trillion dollars.

This week, the digital currency ethereum (ETH) came dangerously close to breaking the all-time high, reaching $4,379 per unit on the Deribit exchange. That's only 0.1141 percent away from the all-time high ($4,384) reached five months ago on May 12, 2021.

After the first U.S.-based bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) was formed, Ethereum's market moves have been slower during the last week, taking a backseat to bitcoin (BTC). Ethereum and a plethora of other crypto assets began to pick up the pace in terms of market performance three days following the listing.

Ethereum/USD prices on Deribit as of Thursday, October 21, 2021.

Seven-day statistics show, ethereum is up 21.0 percent this week and 46.5 percent in the last month. Ether has outperformed Bitcoin year-to-date, growing 1,084.4 percent in the last year.

ETH now has a market capitalization of $513.6 billion, which is less than half of a trillion dollars. Furthermore, ether is far more valuable than it was during the 2017 bull run, having risen 8,985 percent from its high in December of that year.

Over the last two days, ETH's dominance has grown, and the Ethereum Blockchain remains the undisputed king.

In terms of market capitalization, BTC now controls 44.5 percent of the $2.79 trillion total. Ether currently holds 18.3% of the market, and its control has grown significantly in the last 48 hours. Ethereum's network hashrate is 717 terahash per second (TH/s), which is equal to 0.717 petahash per second (PH/s) at the time of writing. The yearly staking yield for Ethereum supporters who stake ETH with a validator is roughly 4.89 percent.

Tether (USDT) is the most popular ethereum trading pair today, accounting for 43.85% of all ether deals on Thursday. USD (19.46 percent), BTC (12.11 percent), BUSD (7.38 percent), EUR (4.14 percent), KRW (2.68 percent), and JPY are the next most popular currencies (1.74 percent ). Binance, Coinbase, FTX, Huobi Pro, Bitforex, and Huobi Japan are among the leading ether exchanges today.

The gray section of the chart represents the decentralized finance (defi) TVL held in the Ethereum blockchain on Thursday.

Furthermore, decentralised finance (defi) has a total value of $240 billion now, with the Ethereum network controlling $165.25 billion of that amount. That's 45.45% of the total TVL in defi today, a decrease from ETH's 69 percent defi domination just a few weeks ago.

On Ethereum now, there are $86.25 billion in stablecoins and 284,009 BTC, or $18.4 billion at today's BTC exchange rates. Cross-chain bridge funds total $15.29 billion, according to charts monitoring bridges to Ethereum.