The price of ethereum, a bitcoin rival, briefly fell more than 15 percent Wednesday amid a flood of demand and increased worries it may face a divisive debate on how to upgrade its network.Ethereum, also known as ether, recovered to trade slightly lower near $328 Wednesday evening, according to CoinDesk.The sharp fall comes after ethereum shot up more than 3,000 percent this year, far surpassing bitcoin's already stellar 180 percent gain and coming close to beating bitcoin as the digital currency with the greatest market value.Both cryptocurrencies are based on the same blockchain technology — a fixed, transparent record-keeping system that allows money to quickly change hands regardless of geographical location.However, ethereum has grown in popularity for its ability to support applications, potentially becoming a structure for a decentralized, next-generation internet.On Tuesday, investor demand at the funding launch for an ethereum-based messaging app called Status clogged the ethereum network.

Online investors were also reportedly unable to withdraw funds from digital currency depositories known as wallets."The Status.im token launch was constructed in a way that caused a huge number of transactions to be formed to chase purchases of the token, so the pools of unprocessed transactions grew large and are being worked though," said Joe Lubin, an early supporter of ethereum and founder of blockchain software developer ConsenSys."We can expect many future experiments as we all figure out the most effective and fairest approaches to building these kinds of systems."Status did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.Ethereum trading on Wednesday was also affected by an outage of the GDAX exchange run by Coinbase.Some traders online noted orders for ethereum being placed this afternoon at far below the $300 price.GDAX said in a statement Wednesday evening ET that trading had resumed, but had no further comment to CNBC on the low-priced trades.In the last several weeks, a surge in digital currency prices has contributed to a flood of investor demand, which has overwhelmed websites and attracted cyberattacks.

Growing pains have affected both as well.Bitcoin's price fluctuated in the last few months as developers debated the best way to upgrade the network.News last week that two upgrade methods, BIP148 and SegWit2x, may be able to work together helped bitcoin recover from its lows of the month.Now, a flood of demand for ethereum has increased similar concerns."The scaling issues are a function of rapid adoption which should have a positive effect on the price eventually," said Benjamin Roberts, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Hex, an ethereum-focused start-up backed by three Canadian venture funds.bitcoin mining pool chartErik Voorhees launched ShapeShift in March of 2015, and secured over US$2 million in venture capital funding from prominent digital currency firms and investors including Roger Ver, Digital Currency Group and leading bitcoin exchange BitFinex.bitcoin block finding calculator

BitFinex Director of Community and Product Development, Zane Tackett, explained that the secret to their rapid growth is a revolutionary design and model, which enables fast and secure trading of cryptocurrencies.Supported by a simple user interface and efficient cryptocurrency processing technology, the platform has become one of the most popular and largest cryptocurrency trading platforms by volume.Following last year’s growth in monthly volume and newly registered users, the ShapeShift team and its CEO, Erik Voorhees, have focused on adding support for new and popular cryptocurrencies such as Factom, Emercoin, and Ethereum.bitcoin jobs vancouverSince January, the market cap of Ethereum has risen from US$70 million to US$777 million, recording a staggering 10x increase in the past two months.bitcoin 1080 tiThe explosive demand for Ethereum resulted in surging daily volumes for ShapeShift, which allowed the ShapeShift team to continue the platforms growth.bitcoin pill review

Daily volumes on ShapeShift have risen to a point where the platform couldn’t handle the spiking trade requests for trending cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Factom.The ShapeShift team announced on March 5 that the platform was struggling to support all of the surging requests from its users.The price of Ether, the underlying cryptocurrency the Ethereum network runs on, has increased 10 fold since the start of the year, from just under $1 to around $10.Due to the sudden surge in demand and volumes, members of the cryptocurrency community have begun to suspect a pump and dump by financial institutions or cryptocurrency enthusiasts.bitcoin nigeria exchangeHowever, some argue that the volume of Ethereum is simply too large for a single individual or a group to manipulate.Many still believe that the involvement of multi-billion dollar banks and financial institutions from the R3 consortium, a collaborative Ethereum blockchain-based financial project including some of the world’s largest financial establishments and corporations, triggered the spike in volumes and price of Ethereum.

On March 2, the R3 consortium announced that Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and 36 other banks completed a trial of five blockchain solutions developed using the Ethereum network.The 40 banks utilized blockchain solutions and infrastructure developed and structured by Chain, IBM, Eris Industries, Ethereum and Intel Corp.to settle transactions and process traditional financial settlements using the Ethereum blockchain network.- Tim Grant, Managing Director and Global Head of R3’s Collaborative Lab Although it is still unknown if the R3 consortium will continue the development of Ethereum products, the demand for Ether and value of the Ethereum network will continue to rise as long as banks and developers persistently create decentralized applications on the Ethereum network, which rely on Ether for financial settlement.Due to the increase in the number of Ethereum developers and members of the Ethereum community, the node count of the Ethereum network has reached over 4,400, approximately 65% of the Bitcoin network’s node count.