I am a long term supporter of Ethereum and know that it is the most trusted network to create smart contracts but the kind of Huge fees for withdrawal and swapping of tokens, we have to nowadays due to slow network or congestion , is going to make it unpopular coin in coming months and other networks like, Binance, EOS, Polka Dot may take its place . The issue with Ethereum is that its developers are trying to scale running Blockchain which is like repairing a car while driving.
The only problem and challenge ethereum network has failed to solution is scalability. Developers are doing anything they can in their power to improve the network but you should know that even with Eth2.0 that is coming, scalability is far from being achieve soon.
The fee will not drastically reduce as people has expected, rigorous test of the network and updates will keep coming as we progress. I believe that can be fully achieved in the future.
About your last paragraph, Blockchain network wouldn't go down except if all the node decide to take down the network.
This is the only way ethereum can be scaled, if there should be avway better way, Vitalik would have proposed the solution.
From ICO, perhaps they never expected the network to be this huge with adoption they would have find a better solution before the launch.