Ethereum is currently mired in a tug-of-war between bulls and bears. Its core contradiction is this: while the Dencun upgrade has dramatically reduced Layer 2 fees, it has also caused a sharp decline in mainnet revenue and ETH burning—pushing supply toward mild inflation. Technically, the ETH/BTC exchange rate has fallen to a three-year low, and the price remains under persistent pressure below the 200-day moving average. On-chain Gas has long stayed below 10 Gwei, reflecting weak activity; even if large whales are still accumulating, it cannot stop the broader weakness. In the competitive landscape, Solana draws in a large amount of traffic thanks to low costs and memecoin siphoning, while the thriving of L2s such as Base instead fragments Ethereum’s settlement value, leaving it facing a “threefold dilemma” of being “expensive, fragmented, and slow.” In the short term, investors can only pin their hopes on the Pectra upgrade to bring about truly consumer-grade applications; otherwise, relative valuation will continue to face downside pressure.