With a press time price of $2,823, Ethereum, at the time of writing, was trading well away from its ATH of $4,356. Thanks to the Bitcoin-fueled corrections in mid-May and the fact that the world’s largest cryptocurrency has failed to register any notable hikes since, ETH was almost 40% off the aforementioned level at the time.

However, price performances notwithstanding, there remains cause for optimism. While the former may have been bad reading for those holding ETH, its on-chain metrics and social data seemed to be flashing signs of normalization, if not outright bullishness. The same was the subject of the latest Santiment Insights report.

Consider this – Perhaps, what best characterized ETH’s price performance on the charts over the past few weeks were the spikes seen in Exchange Inflows. However, when zooming out for a sec, it can be easily established that the scale of the same has been falling consistently too. What’s more, there was conclusive panic selling on the 28th, followed by a degree of profit-taking at $2.6k.

Simply put, sell-side pressure has been falling consistently over the past 10 days, a finding that suggests that we may not see a wider sell-off anytime soon.

The fall in Exchange Inflows can also be read together with the fall in daily active deposits. In fact, according to Santiment,

“Deposits are declining as well. We’re still relatively high, compared to the entire six-month period, but every day we are seeing fewer and fewer addresses moving ETH to exchanges.”

Another one of Ethereum’s more dramatic trading characteristics in the middle of May was how its active addresses corresponded with the altcoin’s price depreciation. Between 14 and 24 May, for instance, while the price dropped from over $4,300 to under $2,000, active addresses too fell from almost 800k to just over 150k.

Over the past week or so, however, even as ETH has struggled to register any uptrend of sorts, the same metric has risen gradually. In fact, Ethereum’s active addresses have risen at a faster clip than Bitcoin.

These are all signs of normalization, but, they are not the only ones, with Ethereum’s social volume and social sentiment lending credible insights into what we might expect next from ETH too.

The same was underlined by the aforementioned Santiment report, with the same finding that while the altcoin’s social volume has indeed fallen, it was consolidating around levels considered “normal.” For the first part of May, the opposite was true, with the same hiking to incredible, unsustainable levels on the back of the hype associated with the world’s largest altcoin.

What’s more, a look at Ethereum’s weighted social sentiment would suggest that ETH holders are once again exhibiting the “crowd doubt” that immediately preceded the rally that started in April. Historically, the same falling below zero has been an opportunity for some to “buy the dip,” fueling a price hike once again.

🤔 #Ethereum traders are showing signs of impatience and exhaustion as the price has chopped in the low to mid $2k range. This kind of capitulation and crowd doubt was last seen April 7th, when $ETH's price then proceeded to doubled over the next month! 💪 https://t.co/cJ2KjA6Vk3 pic.twitter.com/YK4dmM9z2F

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) June 1, 2021

That being said, it’s worth highlighting again that the stated observations are signs of normalization, not necessarily signs of ETH going on a bull run again anytime soon. In fact, the aforementioned metrics should be read with others too, other metrics like the 30d MVRV, with the latter finding that there’s still some room for it to fall within the negative zone.

Now, of late many have argued that Ethereum’s lack of pace with respect to scaling has opened up a market opportunity for the likes of Solana and Binance Smart Chain. That may be so, however, with its fees falling to their lowest levels since January and in light of the relative success of Polygon and Arbitrum, it would seem that at least in the short term, Ethereum might be going back to normal.