The future development prospects of Ethereum are broad, but it still faces challenges. With the continuous advancement of Ethereum 2.0, the PoS consensus mechanism will significantly reduce energy consumption, enhance scalability, and sharding technology is expected to solve the problem of network congestion. The maturity of Layer 2 solutions (such as Optimism and Arbitrum) will further improve transaction efficiency and lower Gas fees.

Ecological applications such as DeFi, NFTs, and the Metaverse will continue to flourish, driving Ethereum to become the core infrastructure of Web3. However, regulatory pressure (such as the SEC's determination of whether ETH is a security) may bring uncertainty, and competitors (such as Solana and Avalanche) are also vying for market share.

In the long run, if Ethereum can maintain technological innovation and ecological advantages, its position as the 'global settlement layer' will become more solid, but it needs to be vigilant against technological iterations falling short of expectations or regulatory risks. Price fluctuations may continue, but the fundamentals are strongly supported.