Whats up with Ethereum?

Here's a glance at the charts, I haven't thought about Eth for a while so it's probably a good time.

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum

What got me thinking was the thumbnail on this video here talking about Public Companies acquiring more BTC and ETH than the ETFs have.

Over the past year, ETH is down -14%

ETH market cap has fallen to just 9.53%, which is lower than it was a few years ago.

https://coinmarkets.today/

I wonder if ETH will rise against BTC or USD when the market turns again.

https://beaconcha.in/burn

"5315054.8 ETH have been burned", I have remained skeptical about Ethereum for a long time.

There's always been something difficult about using Ethereum, whether its trying to run a node, relying on Metamask, gas fee problems, or the fact that it's a bit of a hacker bonfire. Is ETH outdated, or is it the dominant first-mover market leader in smart contract deployments? Will ETH get replaced by Polygon, or some other multichain? I am skeptical, but Ethereum is still ticking along.

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/smart-contracts/

Just a reminder-- "ETH fuels and secures Ethereum"

"Ether is a necessary element -- a fuel -- for operating the distributed application software platform we are building: ethereum. Without the requirement of payment of ether for every computational step and storage operation within the system, infinite loops or excessive storage demands could bog down ethereum and effectively destroy it." - 2015
https://web.archive.org/web/20150209032043/https://ethereum.org/

Do you use ETH?

Do you trust it as much, more, or less than BTC?

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/

Now that ETH has switched to proof of stake, what is it exactly? It goes over my head.

Ethereum is up +86% over the past 3 months, along with BTC's +40.8% rise.

Past performance does not equal future price action, but it does seem that in 2018 ETH declined along with BTC's price decline, so it is reasonable to assume it might happen again, but not guaranteed. However I don't think we are near the top of BTC's mountain this cycle, so ETH may still have some gains to make as well. What do you think? If you use Ethereum, tell me what your thoughts are on this EVM experiment. Is Ethereum going to remain the leader of smart contracts and tokens, or are there any runners up who even have a chance?

https://ultrasound.money/

What is really going on with Ethereum?

This is not financial advice, I don't use Ethereum, I am just a curious skeptic.

@Darkflame