Two years after The Merge, ETH holders are probably wishing they could merge into a new timeline instead. 

That hyped "ecosystem redefining upgrade" that was supposed to make ETH deflationary didn’t exactly work out…

Now, Ethereum is scrambling to fix its mess as it builds the plane while it's in the air. 

Promises Made, Promises Broken

Ethereum kept fewer promises than it reneged on.

Sure, the network consumes 99% less energy than it used to, but the whole deflationary ETH supply and the subsequent price action that was expected to bring didn’t exactly materialize.

Instead, ETH now sits at a 0% supply growth, making it stable – not deflationary. 

ETH vs BTC since The Merge shows that ETH is down a startling 70%. 

When compared to its primary competitor, it's even worse – ETH vs SOL shows SOL winning with a +210% gain. 

The silver lining is that transaction fees have dropped from $15 to $1.88, but how much of that is the static demand?

Daily transactions are firmly stuck at 1.25M as if it's still 2021.

The Whale Watch

Big ETH holders are heading for the exits, too, in a spooky sign for the world’s biggest smart contract network. 

100K+ ETH wallets are down 32%, while 1M+ ETH wallets are down 15%.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin whales are accumulating like it's Black Friday, with 100K+ BTC addresses up 18% and 1M+ BTC addresses up 9%.

This is an ETH problem, specifically. 

Solana's Victory Lap

While ETH has been struggling, Solana has been rapidly eating into its market share.

Solana now boasts 45% of all DEX volume (ETH's at 25%), and its processing transactions at $0.0001 (vs. ETH's $1.88), all while it processes 65,000 TPS (compared to ETH’s 15).

30-day NFT Sales on Solana are $380M, while Ethereum shows just $120M – recall that NFTs used to be the nearly exclusive turf of Ethereum.

Daily Active Users on Solana also top 1.2M, compared to Ethereum’s 500K.

Even Pump.fun on Solana ($850M/day) is smoking Ethereum's $620M in meme coin trades.

From a social sentiment, on-chain analytics, and business perspective, Solana is winning handily against Ethereum. 

Takes And Takeaways

Alphractal's CEO is plainly stating that: "The Merge was the worst event for Ethereum."

Meanwhile, ETH's co-founder Joseph Lubin is complaining about "weak hands" as if the fundamentals and data aren’t showing a significant rotation out of Ethereum due to these ongoing struggles. 

For ETH to stop the bleeding, it needs things like proto-Danksharding to actually work.

It would also help if someone did something about Coinbase controlling 14% of staked ETH and the SEC-approved spot ETFs with staking – after all, institutions love a good yield.

Despite the shifting landscape, ETH still has $383B in market cap and 122M active addresses.

But 2025 looks like the year we’ll finally find out if Ethereum is the MySpace of crypto or if it can reinvent itself in time to stay relevant.