While Solana and Sui are racing to break through, Ethereum is still refining its technical ideals in the 'narrative stack.' Are you beginning to doubt whether the public chain king that once led the crypto revolution has been left behind by the times?
As Bitcoin approaches the $100,000 mark and new chains emerge endlessly, Ethereum seems to be in some kind of 'structural stagnation.' From on-chain activity to developer enthusiasm, from user experience to asset performance, Ethereum's performance increasingly resembles a 'behemoth' caught in a self-referential loop, continuously iterating technologically but struggling in the market.
Behind all this is not only the continuation of its technical idealism but also the deep-rooted systemic dilemmas of the Ethereum ecosystem.
1. Technical ideals vs. market reality: The cost of 'ivory tower' governance
From 2020 to 2024, the Ethereum Foundation continues to promote a technological roadmap, including key upgrades such as ETH 2.0 merger, Layer 2 expansion, and modular architecture, seemingly constructing an ideal 'super decentralized settlement layer.'
But the question is—do users really want this?
New public chains like Solana, Sui, and Aptos have rapidly risen in the past two years, not through technological revolution, but through product experience and market feedback mechanisms. They quickly attract users and developers by offering extreme TPS performance, very low Gas fees, and rich development incentives. In contrast, the Ethereum Foundation has maintained a 'slow is steady, steady is fast' pace in response to community feedback, missing the critical market expansion window.
The higher the technological architecture is piled up, the more real problems remain unsolved—this is a typical manifestation of Ethereum's current 'ivory tower' situation.
2. Narrative fatigue, user boredom: Ethereum has lost resonance with the market.
DeFi Summer, NFT explosion, Layer 2 concept craze... the Ethereum ecosystem resembles a continuously operating 'narrative engine,' with each wave of innovation bringing short-term attention, but failing to form long-term value capture.
Users are no longer willing to pay for a specific technical term. When narratives cannot land, they become empty fireworks. Consequently, the value of ETH cannot keep up with the pace of ecological expansion—what seems to be a prosperous ecosystem is actually a 'pseudo-prosperity' driven by technology with insufficient value transfer.
This is precisely the essence of the failure of the value capture model: In a complex modular architecture, ETH's status as a settlement asset is becoming increasingly marginal, with Layer 2, ZK Rollups, etc., creating new traffic pools but failing to effectively feed economic value back to the mainnet.
3. Layer 2's 'expansion' has instead become 'segmentation'
Ethereum's Layer 2 strategy is highly anticipated, but in reality, projects like Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base, while improving technical performance, have simultaneously triggered new issues such as fragmented user experience and liquidity.
The standards among various Layer 2 are inconsistent and interoperability is weak, forming semi-closed markets. This not only creates barriers for users but also weakens the central position of the ETH mainnet. The more Layer 2 there are, the more the Ethereum mainnet resembles an outsourced settlement layer, which in turn undermines its overall ecological competitiveness.
More importantly, many Layer 2 token issuance demands do not align with the Ethereum ecosystem, but rather resemble a 'vampire attack'—utilizing the Ethereum brand to accumulate users, but the value cannot settle in ETH itself.
4. Geek culture vs. Meme market: Misunderstanding of young people
The crypto market is no longer the pure land of early geeks. Today's users are enthusiastic about memes, willing to pay for jokes, and support stories. However, the Ethereum community has long held a disdainful attitude towards these phenomena in an atmosphere of technical purism.
In stark contrast to Solana's support for community meme projects like BONK and WIF, Ethereum lacks the inclusiveness and acceptance of emerging market cultures. This **'tear between the technological high ground and market sentiment'** has severely hindered Ethereum's connection with younger demographics.
To some extent, Ethereum is losing its early proud community vibrancy, transforming into a high-threshold, low-resonance 'developer stronghold.'
5. The financial asset attributes of ETH are degrading.
EIP-1559 introduced a burn mechanism, and the launch of PoS was supposed to endow ETH with a powerful value capture logic. But the reality is that ETH has not become the 'super hard currency' as expected.
Especially after Layer 2 frequently migrates user activity, diluting transaction fees, the ETH itself has become a 'marginalized infrastructure Token.' In contrast, projects like Solana have achieved a stronger value closed-loop and intrinsic price-driven mechanism through integrated design. When the market seeks financial targets that 'can measure expected returns,' ETH still remains in the role of 'ecological fuel.'
But has Ethereum really 'lost its future'?
Not necessarily.
The developer ecosystem remains solid: Ethereum continues to be the most active developer ecosystem globally, with the most mature DeFi underlying architecture and compliance adaptability.
Security and stability remain the mainnet's advantages: Compared to many emerging public chains, Ethereum's consensus mechanism and node distribution are more risk-resistant, possessing a long-term network trust foundation.
Ethereum remains the first choice for institutional compliance: Whether it is the ETF application pathway or on-chain audit standards, the ETH mainnet is still the core entry point for mainstream finance to enter the Web3 world.
In other words, Ethereum remains an indispensable foundational layer in the crypto world, but it needs a proactive strategic shift.
Back to rationality: Repricing ETH as a 'decentralized network asset.'
The current ETH price performance is clearly structurally disconnected from the narratives, applications, and market capitalization it carries. However, this may not be the endgame, but rather a repricing cycle dominated by 'long-termism.'
Perhaps we need to abandon the fantasy of being labeled as 'the second in the crypto universe' and instead understand its value from a long-term perspective as 'digital public goods' and 'global infrastructure.'
At this point, AI research tools like Mlion.ai become particularly important:
It can assess the real activity of the ecosystem based on on-chain data, developer activity, and capital flow direction.
Utilize AI models to dynamically identify ETH's value contribution distribution in a multi-chain environment.
Quickly capture potential capital movements and whale entry and exit behaviors to provide ETH investors with periodic signal assistance.
And integrate technological progress and DApp growth data related to ETH to fully restore ETH's panoramic value as a foundational asset.
Conclusion:
Ethereum's problem is not that its value is underestimated by the market, but that its own mechanisms have not effectively released value.
The future ETH may no longer be the protagonist leading the next surge, but it still has the potential to become an irreplaceable 'crypto version of public infrastructure.' The real long-term value may quietly accumulate in this slow but solid evolution.
Disclaimer: The above content is for informational sharing only and does not constitute any investment advice. The market is risky, and investment should be cautious.
