A Messari analyst sparked heated debate over the weekend after declaring Ethereum is “dying” as community income declined in August.
In an X submit on Saturday, Messari analysis supervisor AJC acknowledged 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.
However many who learn the submit disagreed, pointing to Ethereum’s rising metrics, app income, stablecoin provide, continued L2 scaling and a distinction between Ethereum being a commodity, quite than a tech inventory — that means it shouldn’t be valued based mostly on income.
Ethereum remains 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 submit transactions.
Chatting with Cointelegraph, Henrik Andersson, chief funding officer of funding agency Apollo Crypto, mentioned it’s unlikely Ethereum is dying, as a result of information from Ethereum L2s analytics device growthepie shows it’s nonetheless “a vibrant ecosystem with stablecoin provide, throughput, and energetic addresses are all at or near all-time excessive.”
As of Aug. 30, there have been additionally over 552,000 each day energetic addresses on Ethereum according to funding analysis platform YCharts, representing a 21% enhance because the identical time in 2024.
“We imagine each Ethereum and Bitcoin have a spot in a crypto portfolio,” Andersson mentioned.
“Ethereum is changing into the impartial decentralized base layer for finance and similar to Bitcoin will not be valued on income however as a retailer of worth, we don’t imagine Ethereum may 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 identical time, AJC argued that energetic addresses and transactions are “meaningless statistics because it pertains to demand.”
Ethereum has been declared “useless” 40 instances this yr
Ethereum has been declared by varied sources at the very least 150 instances since 2014; most of those deaths have been recorded this yr, with about 40, in keeping with Ethereum Obituaries.
Ryan McMillin, chief funding officer at Merkle Tree Capital, informed Cointelegraph that Ethereum continues to adapt and is mostly declared useless in moments of narrative weak spot, falling charges, transaction trending decrease, or when rivals outpace it.
He mentioned that in idea, as a result of smart contracts are a aggressive sector, builders and capital might slowly however completely migrate elsewhere.
“However in observe, its developer group, entrenched DeFi protocols, and regulatory acceptance give it extra endurance than the obituaries counsel; its present narrative is will probably be the TradFi chain of selection, though the SOL ETF could disrupt that too,” McMillin mentioned.
“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 mentioned he doesn’t suppose Ethereum is “dying,” however mentioned 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 different.
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“Ethereum’s ultra-sound cash framing was by no means going to win towards Bitcoin’s tougher financial premium, and relating to throughput and value, Solana merely gives magnitudes of enchancment,” he mentioned.
One space that has helped Etherum 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 keeping with McMillin.
“However that benefit could not final lengthy, spot Solana ETFs are anticipated within the coming weeks, which might rapidly stage the taking part in area for mainstream capital inflows.”
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