As you all know, Ethereum is the coin only for smart contract. However, there is still NEO, Waves, EOS, Stellar, Achain, and soon maybe Rebellious, XAS... ETH is not a coin for invest, the only reason it was high because ETH's competitors still in develop and not popular yet. Litecoin, otherwise, is actually a younger brother of BTC, and Bitcoin Cash and it is accepted by the huge community.
So in the future, I strongly believe, ETH will be taken place by LITECOIN.
Is not Bitcoin holding on now on the same demand or as you said on trust and popularity. After all, we can also assume that the ether is able to at least reach the level of bitcoin and this is no longer seen as not real. Nobody argues that there are coins that are more effective than the ether, but they can not jump above their heads without innovations.