#以太坊的未来
I. Market Capitalization Status: The Crisis of Moving from 'Second-in-Command' to 'Chaser'

As of April 25, 2025, ETH trades around $1,770, with a circulating market capitalization of about $37.87 billion, a staggering 51.7% drop from the peak of $3,668 set on January 14, nearly erasing all gains since October 2023.

Comparing the market capitalization of Bitcoin at $1.98 trillion against Solana's $10.43 billion, ETH's market share has shrunk from 17.4% in 2022 to less than 10%, and it has frequently ranked third from mid-February to the end of March.

If calculated based on the average price in Q2, ETH has declined from $2,150 in February to $1,890 in March, a nearly 12% drop in the central price.

II. Technological Upgrades: 'Pie in the Sky' or 'Implementation'?

  1. Sharding and Pectra Progress

    Holesky Testnet Failure: In March 2025, the Holesky network experienced a 3-hour outage due to repeated submissions of the deposit contract, with a reported failure rate of up to 15% in community proposals (data from the Ethereum research forum). Although the latest goal aims to reduce shard deposit confirmation time from 9 hours to 13 minutes, it stabilized at 25 minutes by mid-April.

    EIP-7702 Account Abstraction: Several DApps (such as Aave and Uniswap) provided feedback after deploying on the testnet that the Gas fee sponsorship function has not yet covered high-frequency operations like Flashloans, with an actual experience gap of 40% compared to official claims.

  2. Layer-2 Ecosystem Differentiation


    The combined TVL of Optimism and Arbitrum exceeds $21 billion; however, nearly $500 million in funds flowed out in February. In contrast, the Solana ecosystem (Raydium, Magic Eden) saw a new TVL of $780 million in February, with a 12% quarter-on-quarter increase in users. The circulation of USDT on BNB Chain surpassed $70 billion, accounting for 69% of global USDT trading volume, directly diverting ETH's core position in DeFi.


III. Ecological Competition: Solana's 'Lightning War' and Ethereum's 'Hollowing Out'

  • Project Migration Case: NFT platform ArtBlocks announced in March this year that it would prioritize launching 30% of its new collections on Solana, directly citing low Gas fees and second-level confirmations; the decentralized exchange 1inch also deployed its Solana version for the first time in Q1.

  • Developer Dynamics: Former core developer Eric Conner officially exited in early April. The community voting participation rate in the Ethereum Foundation governance proposal dropped from 48% in Q3 2024 to 32% in Q1 2025, highlighting a trust gap. Meanwhile, Solana's low entry barrier based on the Move language has attracted nearly 200 new project teams.

IV. Macro and Regulation: The Dual Attack of 'Stagflation' and 'Compliance'

  • Market Correlation: CryptoCompare data shows that the rolling weekly correlation coefficient between ETH and the S&P 500 has risen from 0.43 to 0.67 over the past six months. If U.S. stocks experience a pullback, ETH may face a second downturn.

  • Regulatory Process: The U.S. SEC has once again postponed the approval window for ETH staking ETFs to the end of June, and the EU's MiCAR requires all DeFi protocols to register and disclose core contract risks before 2026. The Japanese Financial Services Agency recently confirmed that it classifies ETH as a 'designated digital asset' but has not yet clarified trading tax regulations.

Conclusion

Ethereum is facing a decline in market share, delays in technological realization, intensified ecological competition, and multiple adverse macro policies. At this crucial moment of crossing the threshold of the 'Space Age,' only by accelerating the implementation of upgrades, improving governance transparency, and seizing opportunities in Layer-2 and cross-chain collaborations can it reshape its moat as the 'computer of the digital world.' Otherwise, ETH may become merely a footnote in 'historical memory' rather than a contender.