Can Ethereum Rise Again?

Ethereum has recently shown lackluster performance, attracting widespread attention in the cryptocurrency world. This once-star project has faced multiple challenges over the past few months, including price declines, a shrinking market share, and waning community confidence. However, in recent days, Ethereum seems to show signs of a rebound. This article will delve into the reasons behind Ethereum's long-term slump and whether the current rebound can be sustained.

The Dilemma of Ethereum

The decline of Ethereum has lasted for several months. Since December 2024, whenever the overall cryptocurrency market falls, Bitcoin has always been able to rebound quickly and hit new highs, while Ethereum struggles to regain its vitality.

A review of Ethereum's recent market performance: In November 2024, the market was in an upward channel, with Bitcoin priced around $96,405 and Ethereum at $3,703. On December 1, 2024, the market saw a slight pullback, with Bitcoin dropping to $93,557 and Ethereum falling to $3,337. Although both major cryptocurrencies reached significant price levels later in the month, they failed to maintain their upward momentum and fell again.

On January 1, 2025, one month later, the price of Bitcoin slightly rebounded to $94,500, while Ether continued to decline to $3,298. By February 1, Bitcoin had significantly fallen back to $84,381, and Ether dropped further to $2,236. Although Bitcoin briefly broke through $102,000 in late February, Ether never managed to return to its previous high. In fact, even during Bitcoin's rebound from $84,381 in February to $94,304 in April, Ether still failed to break through the earlier resistance level. The BTC/ETH ratio continued to widen, fully reflecting this trend.

As of the time of publication, the trading price of Ethereum is approximately $2,400, which has seen a significant increase compared to recent lows. However, it has still not broken through the higher price range. So, what exactly is happening in the Ethereum market? Let's analyze from several key perspectives.

Bitcoin and Meme Coins Grab the Spotlight

In recent months, Bitcoin and meme coins have become the focal point of the market. The news of the U.S. government's plan to establish a Bitcoin reserve has sparked widespread discussion, with several state governments actively advancing related plans. Texas and New Hampshire have made substantial progress in this regard, with other states and some countries following suit.

The interests of sovereign nations have further attracted the attention of large investors and institutions. Recently, a well-known publicly listed company announced an increase in its Bitcoin holdings, solidifying its position as the publicly listed company with the most Bitcoin. Out of a total supply of 21 million Bitcoins, the company holds over 555,000.

At the same time, meme coins have also diverted market attention. It is worth noting that these popular meme coins are not issued on the Ethereum network. One of the most successful meme coins of 2025 has a market value of over $1 billion, and the popular meme coin issuance platforms have also chosen other public chains. In fact, most of the popular meme tokens created at the end of 2024 and in 2025 come from this platform.

Therefore, Ethereum has clearly missed this wave of enthusiasm. In addition, the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector also lacks significant innovation, and the level of discussion has noticeably declined. Overall, Ethereum is not at the center of any major hotspots and lacks strong momentum to drive price increases.

Transfer of Liquidity to Subnetworks

The high Gas fees of Ethereum have always been a major barrier to its development. Worse still, multiple layer-two network solutions have emerged on the Ethereum network, such as Polygon, Optimism, Base, Linea, and Arbitrum. These layer-two networks compete with Ethereum for liquidity. With the existence of stablecoins, these networks can operate without needing a large amount of ETH. More importantly, these layer-two platforms support a variety of activities, which reduces the demand for transactions through the Ethereum main chain. Therefore, even with frequent on-chain activities, the demand for ETH has not risen as expected.

The Rise of Competing Networks

We have mentioned how other public chains weaken Ethereum's market dominance. In fact, certain competitors offer developers and users a better experience. Who wouldn't want to use a faster, cheaper, and more powerful blockchain? According to reports from authoritative data platforms, the sustained user activity on certain emerging public chains clearly demonstrates why they can attract more developers and ordinary investors. Here are some prominent reasons:

1. Higher performance and scalability: Some emerging public chains can process up to 3,000 transactions per second, theoretically even reaching 65,000 TPS. In contrast, Ethereum's processing capacity of 15 transactions per second is clearly insufficient. Considering the extremely low costs of emerging public chains when handling large transactions, it is not surprising that developers prefer them.

2. An active and supportive ecosystem: Certain public chain ecosystems provide developers with abundant resources and tools, facilitating their rapid growth. These ecosystems offer developer toolkits and funding opportunities, allowing new projects to emerge seamlessly.

In addition, other public chains are also continuously improving in popularity and performance. The institutions adopting these layer one public chains will further weaken Ethereum's dominant position. It is worth mentioning that certain specialized public chains have also made significant progress in niche areas such as perpetual futures trading and the stablecoin market.

Limited Institutional Interest

While global enterprises, market giants, and countries continue to accumulate Bitcoin, the situation for Ethereum is starkly different. According to statistics from authoritative data platforms, there are very few publicly traded companies that hold Ethereum, with a total value of less than $500 million, while Bitcoin's figure has surpassed $50 billion.

The crypto ETF market also shows a significant gap between the demand for Bitcoin and Ethereum, with the latter failing to attract large inflows of capital like the former. ETF data indicates that Bitcoin, leveraging its first-mover advantage and widely accepted store of value function, has attracted the favor of many institutional investors. Although Ethereum spot ETFs have also recorded billions of dollars in inflows, their scale still lags far behind Bitcoin.

The Future of Ethereum: Can It Make a Comeback?

Ethereum urgently needs a significant breakthrough to regain market dominance, attract widespread investment, and achieve a surge in value. At the time of writing, Ethereum has just completed a network upgrade. This is undoubtedly a positive development, but it has not yet fully addressed the challenges of asset and data bridging in the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem. Certain competing public chains still maintain an advantage as users can seamlessly switch between multiple decentralized applications (DApps).

Nevertheless, this upgrade seems to have had a positive impact on the price of Ethereum. In the past 24 hours, the price of ETH has risen by 20%, reaching $2,400. Can this once star token seize the opportunity to return to its peak? We need to patiently observe the actual improvements this upgrade brings to the Ethereum network, and whether these improvements are sufficient for ETH to regain market favor. In the future, whether Ethereum can stand out in fierce competition and redefine the future of blockchain technology remains a question worth关注.