What do you think, whether the current competition will suppress ethereum from the market due to the big difference in transaction costs, because it remains the only one with a huge price for the transaction. I received a token worth 3 dollars on the airdrop, and I had to pay 7 dollars in transfer costs!
High transaction fees This hurts the users significantly. It is even worse when there's a cyber concern. Long criticized, the gas fees of Ethereum have long been labeled as too high. And with tiny transactions, like a $3 Airdrop fee, paying a $7 fee just isn't enough that is why other blockchain networks, such as Solana, Binance Smart Chain, etc. and so many others are gaining impetus—he charges much lower fees and processes transactions much faster.
The latter is still a leader, however, due to its system, security, and number of developers and applications running on the platform. Ethereum upgrade plans, such as Ethereum 2.0 that is now live and in progress to fully migrate to a proof-of-stake model, are one of the attempts to solve these problems of payment through upgrading itself better. Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism reduce costs by enabling transactions to be performed across the main Ethereum network.
In other words, this transaction alone might be enough to be the tipping point to stop Ethereum's current momentum, especially if not handled properly. Especially with faster and less expensive competitors. But for the moment, the Ethereum ecosystem still stands competitive when it comes to short-term expectations and long-term potential.
If we remove tokens and bridges, I think that Ethereum's uses for deposits are more limited than Bitcoin's, and therefore if the fees for those transactions are low, Ethereum will attract all the liquidity that was going to Solana and other altcoins, and if they are high, the investments will go to those altcoins.
that would completely defeat the sole advantage that ETH is having compared to bitcoin though.
I think the main reason ETH could get this far because the easiness of deploying token, no need to create our own blockchain just use the ERC20 protocol and a project already have a token that pretty much has the same capability as coin.
moreover the smart contracts also proven to be a game changer, but it also comes at cost, since ETH is among the first one to implement smart contract capability anyway, it's inevitable that the deisgn might not be perfect, at least not as perfect as the more recent blockchains e.g solana, bnb and so on therefore the never ending problem of the gas fee.
even it seems ETH just want to offload transactions completely to L2 to mitigate the gas problem and instead focused on creating quality L2 that up to standards.
Now, this shift is definitely a reason that has helped Ethereum to gain such space and leadership in DeFi. It has become very easy for developers to deploy tokens and create dApps; hence the ecosystem has many developers engaged here, making it the platform for innovation.
But as you're saying, that takes us back to the beginning: These along with their own set of problems bring along. For instance, they impede small businesses and projects at risk of high gas fees, while Ethereum's layer two solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum do so in an attempt to actually reduce those problems. But it raises questions for the long-term future about how much we lean on those solutions.
New blockchains and therefore is competition to Ethereum. It can offer lower fees and faster transaction times, learning from previous design choices in Ethereum. It thus compels Ethereum to grow and evolve in ways never seen before. While established ecosystems and environments are the key strengths for Ethereum: it is a must for it to keep innovating. This constantly changing blockchain landscape will require Ethereum to ensure quality to stay ahead of its competitors before they grow in size while keeping cost-effectiveness.