Why Has ETH Performed Poorly in This Cycle?

No one can know for sure, but I believe the main reasons are as follows:

This cycle has been very tough for ETH. In 2022, when BTC was at the bottom of the bear market, many were talking about how ETH would easily reach $10,000 in this cycle. Now, many seem to doubt whether ETH can reach a new high this year.

Given the current market sentiment, you really can't blame them; even ETC has recently outperformed ETH. But in my opinion, ETH's poor performance indicates that some significant changes are needed.

Why has ETH performed poorly in this cycle?

No one can know for sure, but I believe the main reasons are as follows:

With almost every Ethereum L2 launching a token, many Ethereum fans have started to choose to buy L2 tokens instead of ETH, significantly reducing the amount of funds flowing into ETH. If you are bullish on Solana without L2, then just buy SOL. But if you are bullish on ETH, there are dozens of ETH beta options available for purchase.

There are currently over 100 Ethereum L2 projects. While moving funds from one L2 to another is not a problem for advanced DeFi users, it can be a nightmare for regular retail investors. Indeed, trading on Ethereum L2 is fast and cheap now, but until the cross-L2 user experience improves, L2 scaling won't help Ethereum achieve mass adoption.

In the last cycle, Ethereum was the leading L1 blockchain by all metrics.

While I believe it still has the best DeFi ecosystem, other L1s (like Solana) are now often surpassing it in revenue and DEX trading volume. I think this is partly due to their technological advancements.

Ethereum has made significant progress over the past few years, but some L1 competitors have progressed faster and are now able to offer a better user experience.

How can we make ETH great again?

Here are some ideas:

I believe these could be important steps in the right direction. Over the past few years, the Ethereum Foundation and its community seem to have become a bit complacent, which could cause long-term serious damage to the project.

Ethereum is still the leading L1, but if it doesn't start adopting a winning mindset, other L1s with teams eager to win could also win the L1 war.

Fortunately, we have already seen some positive developments, especially from ecosystem projects trying to improve ETH sentiment:

The first three items on the list above will certainly increase the adoption of Ethereum's second layer. But the real question is:

Will they also have a positive impact on ETH's price?

But in my opinion, the most important things to make ETH rise again are:

An increase in ETH will benefit everyone holding altcoins. Historically, ETH's rise has been a catalyst for the altcoin market boom.