A Messari analyst sparked heated debate over the weekend after declaring Ethereum is “dying” as community income declined in August.
In an X put up on Saturday, Messari analysis supervisor AJC stated that “Ethereum’s fundamentals are collapsing,” as Ethereum’s income from charges in August was $39.2 million, down over 40% year-over-year and roughly 20% month-over-month.
But many who learn the put up disagreed, pointing to Ethereum’s rising metrics, app income, stablecoin provide, continued L2 scaling and a distinction between Ethereum being a commodity, slightly than a tech inventory — that means it shouldn’t be valued based mostly on income.
Ethereum continues to be a vibrant ecosystem
A big a part of Ethereum’s fall in revenue has come because of the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which lowered transaction charges for layer-2 scaling networks utilizing it as a base layer to put up transactions.
Talking to Cointelegraph, Henrik Andersson, chief funding officer of funding agency Apollo Crypto, stated it’s unlikely Ethereum is dying, as a result of information from Ethereum L2s analytics software growthepie shows it’s nonetheless “a vibrant ecosystem with stablecoin provide, throughput, and lively addresses are all at or near all-time excessive.”
As of Aug. 30, there have been additionally over 552,000 each day lively addresses on Ethereum according to funding analysis platform YCharts, representing a 21% enhance for the reason that similar time in 2024.
“We consider each Ethereum and Bitcoin have a spot in a crypto portfolio,” Andersson stated.
“Ethereum is turning into the impartial decentralized base layer for finance and similar to Bitcoin will not be valued on income but as a retailer of worth, we don’t consider Ethereum could be valued solely on its income.”
In response to critics, nonetheless, AJC defended his use of income to worth the layer-1 blockchain, explaining that as a result of it’s collected in Ether (ETH), one of many largest historic demand drivers of consumption is now “trending towards zero.”
On the similar time, AJC argued that lively addresses and transactions are “meaningless statistics because it pertains to demand.”
Ethereum has been declared “useless” 40 occasions this 12 months
Ethereum has been declared by varied sources at the very least 150 occasions since 2014; most of those deaths have been recorded this 12 months, with about 40, in response to Ethereum Obituaries.
Ryan McMillin, chief funding officer at Merkle Tree Capital, advised Cointelegraph that Ethereum continues to adapt and is usually declared useless in moments of narrative weak point, falling charges, transaction trending decrease, or when opponents outpace it.
He stated that in idea, as a result of smart contracts are a aggressive sector, builders and capital might slowly but completely migrate elsewhere.
“But in apply, its developer group, entrenched DeFi protocols, and regulatory acceptance give it extra endurance than the obituaries counsel; its present narrative is it is going to be the TradFi chain of selection, though the SOL ETF might disrupt that too,” McMillin stated.
“The larger story is that crypto is maturing into an ecosystem of differentiated property, and Ethereum will stay one of many central items for years to come back, and competitors with different L1s could be very wholesome.”
McMillin stated he doesn’t suppose Ethereum is “dying,” but stated it has been caught in a “tough spot” for almost two years as a result of it’s trapped between Bitcoin’s narrative as digital gold and Solana’s pitch because the quicker, cheaper various.
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“Ethereum’s ultra-sound cash framing was by no means going to win in opposition to Bitcoin’s tougher financial premium, and relating to throughput and price, Solana merely affords magnitudes of enchancment,” he stated.
One space that has helped Ethereum in 2025 is its spot exchange-traded funds, which unlocked conventional finance flows and positioned Ether as a levered play on stablecoin adoption and community development, in response to McMillin.
“But that benefit might not final lengthy, spot Solana ETFs are anticipated within the coming weeks, which might rapidly stage the taking part in subject for mainstream capital inflows.”
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