The problem with Ethereum has never been that it is 'not advanced enough', but rather that it is 'too advanced'. It resembles a city with continuously added floors; the original streets were once walkable, but are now wrapped in elevated roads, tunnels, and interchanges. The designers still look up to the future, while the people on the ground have already begun to get lost.

Gas fees are the most immediate pain. It is not a technical term but an emotion: hesitation, calculation, abandonment. A simple interaction requires one to ask whether it is worth it; a transfer may cost more than the amount itself. When the ideal of 'decentralization' comes at a high cost, it quietly blocks ordinary users at the door.

To alleviate congestion, Ethereum has chosen layered scaling. Thus, the world has been divided into countless L2s: Rollup, ZK, Optimistic, with names like academic papers and experiences like experiments. Assets move back and forth on bridges, security assumptions stack upon each other, and the cost of understanding keeps getting passed on to users. The system is indeed more efficient, but its overall intuitiveness has diminished.

Developers here are both strong and burdened. Ethereum grants them the greatest freedom while imposing the most complexity. Protocol updates, EIPs, compatibility, audits—every step demands a high degree of professionalism. Innovation is still occurring, but the pace is slow and the costs high, like moving through deep snow, leaving deep tracks with every step.

The deeper issue is temperament. Ethereum is gradually shifting from a 'globally usable value network' to a 'platform for elite engineer collaboration'. It remains correct, rigorous, and decentralized, but has lost a bit of lightness. When a system needs to be repeatedly explained to be used, it has already strayed from intuition.

Therefore, Ethereum's biggest problem does not come from competitors, but from its own weight. It carries too many ideals, histories, and responsibilities; it moves steadily but struggles to do so quickly. It may still be the cornerstone of future finance, but the road to the future is no longer smooth.