Spot on about the recent hard fork for Ethereum. It was all credit to Buterin, not the the Ethereum community and developers. In fact, even the developers that he himself hand picked to join the alliance, some have opposed that hard fork and still are working on their own version (so yes, there is at least one qualitative alternative to the current forked version, just that Buterin didn't accept it).
Waves on the other hand is the one to slowly develop without a care to its price, which is why it has just been hovering at the same spot for months. That's actually a sure sign of stability if you ask me.