$ETH $ETH is the native cryptocurrency used to pay for gas (transaction fees) and participate in decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, DAOs, and more.

🔹 Current Sentiment (as of mid-2025)

Ethereum 2.0 / Proof-of-Stake (PoS): With the full transition to PoS completed, Ethereum has significantly reduced energy consumption and improved scalability, though high gas fees remain a challenge during network congestion.

Layer 2 Adoption: Solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync are helping Ethereum scale further, making transactions cheaper and faster.

Competition: Ethereum still leads in developer activity and total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, but it's facing strong competition from blockchains like Solana, Avalanche, and newer chains that offer higher throughput and lower fees.