Ether has been trading below the $2,400 level for three months, with a year-to-date loss of 21% compared to an 11% decline in the crypto market cap.
Ethereum’s decentralized trading volume has declined by approximately 53% over the past six months. DApp revenue decreased by approximately 49%. Solana and Hyperliquid now collectively account for about 42% of DApp revenue market share, even though Ethereum’s Total Value Locked (TVL) is still 6x that of its closest competitor.
A cooling memecoin market and a decline in new token issuance led to a decline in trading activity from Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges, with cheaper competing blockchains absorbing the rest.
Hacking and competition both eroded trader psychology
Losses from cryptocurrency-related exploits reached approximately $630 million in April alone. KelpDAO and Drift Protocol accounted for over 80% of this number. Cybersecurity firm Hakken linked the attack to North Korea-linked attackers.
As Cryptopolitan reported in late April, the KelpDAO exploit alone led to a $13 billion Aave TVL breach within days, with an estimated $177 million in bad loans in the lending protocol before recovery efforts began.
The erosion of trust caused by hacking further exacerbated the structural changes.
Solana and HyperLiquid have not only attracted speculative trading volume. They are steadily capturing DApp revenue share that has historically rested on Ethereum, especially in derivatives and high-frequency trading workflows, where lower fees and faster confirmations are more important than pure decentralization.
BitMine’s $1.4 billion paper loss $ETH Ministry of Finance paper
Bitmine, the largest publicly traded holder of Ether, paid approximately $12.2 billion for its position. Its current value is nearly $10.8 billion, with $1.4 billion in unrealized losses.
The company holds $5.18 million $ETHapproximately 4.12% of the circulating supply, and 73% of those tokens are staked. Annual staking revenue amounts to approximately $264 million.
Bitmine has not indicated any intention to sell. Tom Lee, the company’s chairman, said: $ETH The company says it is currently in the “final stage of the mini-cryptocurrency winter.”
But the loss of paper weakens arguments such as: $ETH It has the potential to serve as a stable corporate financial reserve asset, especially if Strategy’s Bitcoin financial model also shows signs of strain.
Two large-scale crypto asset models built on different chains both consider the importance of the underlying asset in the same week.
Ethereum’s next test will be with the Gramsterdam hard fork, which is expected to improve base layer scalability and throughput.
Finally, the block construction pipeline.
In Gramsterdam, Ethereum has acquired ePBS, which allows proponents to outsource to a free, permissionless marketplace of block builders.
This ensures that block builder centralization does not affect staking centralization, but…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 2, 2026
Whether the upgrade reverses the transition to Solana and Hyperliquid or accelerates the transition to a layer 2 economy is the question the upgrade must answer.
The current pattern sees investors increasingly focusing on network activity and revenue rather than betting on token prices. Ethereum data does not yet support this bet.
