ethereum:native is heading into September with a pretty comfortable gap above its options balance for now. Most of the August contracts expired on Friday, and the new positioning currently puts September Max Pain around $2,100. That's quite a bit below spot, which is generally a healthier setup than having Max Pain sitting above price. I don't treat that number as a target ETH somehow needs to revisit though. It's more useful to me as a moving reference for where options positioning is finding balance. The red circles on the chart show why I keep an eye on it. Over the past year, the periods where ETH slipped below Max Pain tended to look noticeably weaker. That's the situation I'd be more interested in watching again, rather than trying to predict a pullback simply because $2,100 exists below us. There's another possibility too. If ETH holds up and positioning becomes more constructive during September, Max Pain can simply start moving higher. In other words, the gap doesn't necessarily have to close because price falls. The options market can adjust upward instead. So $2,100 matters, but probably not in the way people usually think about Max Pain. For me, losing it would make the options picture considerably less comfortable. Staying above it while Max Pain itself begins climbing would be the much more interesting development. That's what I'll be watching as September positioning fills in.