The problem is that today Ethereum cannot offer a real solution to its problems. And the new alts, in addition to supporting smart contracts, with a fairly simple migration of smart contracts, offer many more interesting features on their platforms. At the same time, the developers of Ethereum, now all efforts are thrown into solving the balance of the cost of transactions, and subchains, which are implemented by default in many alternatives. The question is - for the survival of Ethereum, it must have really unique features in order not to lose its positions and defeat competitors. BUT. Instead of developing features, the key tasks of the system are currently far from new functionality, but only fix problems. What is much inferior to competitive projects
I find it weird I'm starting to defend ETH a lot these days but I've personally been convinced that they offer the right solutions at an approach that is conservative enough. Very similar people argue Segwit and LN were not real solutions to scalability problems (but they were!).
I think ETH is ultimately wrong do go POS but I'm happy they did and we can find out if that really is viable for security.
I think fixing problems as they come is a privilege for bit networks:)
This is not a defense, this is a real assessment of the situation, slightly seasoned with personal preferences
Conservatism in such a dynamic and volatile market can create big, or rather, irreparable problems. 5 years ago, no one thought that in the crypto world there might be something from the "great" other than bitcoin. But time has shown that bitcoin is certainly a "fundamental" system, but functionally it is already far behind progressive concepts.