Can Ethereum nonetheless declare L1 dominance as Solana positive factors floor and the ETH/BTC ratio crashes under 0.022?
ETH/BTC hits a multi-year low
Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest crypto by market cap, is dealing with a sobering actuality verify. The ETH/BTC ratio, a metric used to gauge Ethereum’s energy relative to Bitcoin (BTC), has dropped to 0.022, its lowest degree since December 2020, signaling a pointy decline in Ethereum’s relative efficiency.
Since September 2022, when the ratio hovered round 0.085, Ethereum has shed greater than 73% of its worth relative to Bitcoin. As of this writing, ETH is buying and selling at round $1,880, down 9% over the previous week and a steep 62% from its all-time excessive of $4,890 in November 2021.
In comparison with Bitcoin, which is down simply 10% year-to-date, buying and selling at $84,300 ranges, Ethereum’s decline of 46% in the identical timeframe is greater than 4 instances deeper.
The declining ratio displays Ethereum’s slipping dominance within the good contract and layer 1 ecosystem, an area it as soon as dominated unchallenged.
As different L1s like Solana (SOL), Binance Chain (BNB), Avalanche (AVAX), and others achieve floor, and as Bitcoin reasserts its dominance, Ethereum seems to be treading water.
Let’s take a better have a look at what’s driving this imbalance, whether or not Ethereum is genuinely shedding floor, and what it means for the way forward for the L1 blockchain race.
Ethereum’s metrics present indicators of softening
As of Apr. 1, Ethereum’s complete worth locked stands at roughly $50.5 billion, accounting for 52.5% of the entire market. This marks a notable drop from 61.64% in February 2024, pointing to a gradual lack of share within the decentralized finance market.
A part of this shift may be traced to the rise of opponents like Solana, which has seen its TVL enhance considerably. Solana’s share has grown from 2.84% to 7.24%, bringing its complete TVL to $6.69 billion, greater than a 2.5x rise in simply over a yr.
One rising development is the distinction in consumer habits throughout networks. Ethereum continues to draw customers concerned in passive DeFi actions, akin to yield farming and staking.
In distinction, Solana’s ecosystem is drawing extra speculative, lively merchants, significantly in meme tokens and high-frequency DeFi, suggesting that Ethereum’s present use circumstances, whereas strong, is probably not aligned with the place retail consumer exercise is at present trending.
In the meantime, excessive gasoline charges, traditionally one in every of Ethereum’s greatest limitations, have improved. Common gasoline costs dropped to 1.12 GWEI in March 2025, considerably decrease than ranges seen in earlier years.
However regardless of these enhancements, Ethereum nonetheless stays comparatively costly and slower to make use of in comparison with newer chains, particularly for customers making smaller transactions.
Amid this, whereas Bitcoin ETFs have attracted greater than $36 billion in internet inflows to this point, Ethereum ETFs have struggled to seize consideration. In March 2025 alone, internet complete flows into ETH ETFs fell by 9.8%, dropping to $2.43 billion.
On the buying and selling aspect, sentiment round Ethereum seems to be deteriorating. In keeping with The Kobeissi Letter, quick positioning in Ethereum surged 40% in early February and has risen over 500% since November 2024, marking an unprecedented degree of bearish positioning.
In the meantime, Ethereum’s total market dominance has now dropped under 8.4%, its lowest degree in over 4 years. As Milocredit, a crypto mortgage firm, famous, this implies that capital is flowing out of ETH and into different choices, together with Bitcoin, Solana, and rising layer 1 platforms which can be capitalizing on Ethereum’s slowed momentum.
Scalability commerce offs are catching up
For years, Ethereum’s progress narrative has hinged on the promise of scaling. But, as of early 2025, that promise stays largely unfulfilled on the base layer. Regardless of a number of protocol upgrades, Ethereum’s mainnet nonetheless processes simply 10 to 62 transactions per second.
On the time of writing, its efficient throughput hovers round 16 transactions per second—a determine that stands in stark distinction to Solana’s 4,322 TPS. This has develop into a key purpose why newer customers and purposes are selecting to construct elsewhere.
The transition to proof-of-stake by way of the Merge in 2022 considerably improved Ethereum’s vitality effectivity, reducing vitality use by over 99%. Nonetheless, it did little to resolve the community’s core throughput limitations.
Consequently, Ethereum has more and more relied on layer-2 rollups like Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), and Base to scale its operations. These networks lengthen Ethereum’s capabilities by processing transactions off-chain and settling them again on the mainnet.
Though L-2 adoption has lowered consumer prices, it has additionally led to unintended penalties. Exercise is shifting away from Ethereum’s mainnet, drawing each customers and transaction charges towards L-2 ecosystems.
As one consumer on X famous, “Arbitrum and Optimism are raking in charges… whereas Ethereum’s base layer is popping right into a ghost city.”
This development is backed by information. Analysts like Geoff Kendrick at Customary Chartered argue that L2s, significantly high-volume ones like Coinbase’s Base, are siphoning off billions in transaction charges that may in any other case movement via Ethereum’s mainnet.
Kendrick estimates that Base alone has eliminated round $50 billion in worth from Ethereum’s market cap by diverting financial exercise. In flip, this reduces the quantity of ETH being burned via gasoline charges, weakening its deflationary mechanics and the long-promoted narrative of ETH as “ultrasound cash.”
After EIP-1559, Ethereum’s fee-burning mechanism was anticipated to counterbalance issuance. Nonetheless, with exercise now fragmented throughout dozens of rollups and sidechains, total payment burns have dropped considerably.
ETH has as soon as once more develop into internet inflationary, now at an annualized fee of 0.5%. In the meantime, staking yields have fallen under 2.5%, making ETH much less engaging when in comparison with stablecoin methods providing returns of over 4.5% throughout DeFi platforms.
Even Ethereum’s upcoming improve, Pectra — designed to enhance L2 effectivity by rising blob capability from three to 6 for information availability gained’t do a lot.
Kendrick has said that he doesn’t anticipate Pectra to reverse the broader ETH/BTC decline, calling the improve inadequate to handle Ethereum’s underlying structural points.
On the identical time, exercise on Ethereum’s mainnet seems to be drying up. Bots, significantly tackle poisoning bots, at the moment are dominating gasoline utilization on high contracts. Fewer natural purposes are deploying on to the mainnet.
As one consumer put it, “ETH mainnet is turning into a graveyard.” Whereas this can be an exaggeration, Ethereum’s core layer is shedding its fame as the first vacation spot for on-chain innovation.
Ethereum value prediction: Is the underside in?
A number of alerts from market analysts level to a large spectrum of attainable outcomes, however the dangers look like stacking up extra shortly for ETH than the potential tailwinds.
On the macro entrance, Ethereum stays closely tied to the broader threat asset atmosphere. In keeping with Bloomberg strategist Mike McGlone, “ETH stays carefully correlated with threat belongings,” which means its efficiency is more likely to replicate that of U.S. equities and high-beta sectors.
If inventory markets decline additional in 2025, significantly below the load of excessive rates of interest, persistent inflation, or weakening international progress, Ethereum might face intensified downward strain.
McGlone warned that in a deteriorating macro atmosphere, ETH might “probably revisit the $1,000 degree,” which might characterize a drop of almost 50 p.c from present ranges.
From a technical standpoint, the worth construction can be displaying indicators of pressure. Analyst Mags remarked that Ethereum has “one of many worst charts of all time,” pointing to repeated failures to interrupt above the $4,000 resistance zone throughout this cycle.
After three makes an attempt, ETH not solely didn’t reclaim its highs but in addition misplaced assist at its mid-range degree and fell under an upward-sloping trendline that had held because the earlier market backside.
This sort of breakdown, mixed with the dearth of sturdy assist under present ranges, opens the opportunity of a retest close to the $1,060 vary — a value final seen in the course of the 2022 bear market. As Mags famous, “technically talking, the bearish situation appears to be like extra probably.”
Nonetheless, a extra optimistic perspective got here from dealer Michaël van de Poppe, who noticed that Ethereum could also be displaying early indicators of a possible “deviation.”
In keeping with him, if ETH can cleanly break above the $2,100 to $2,150 zone, it might spark a pointy transfer as much as $2,800, indicating renewed energy out there.
He additionally highlighted a latest decline within the U.S. Greenback Index as a positive macro sign, suggesting {that a} weaker greenback would possibly assist assist a crypto rebound in Q2.
Nonetheless, these bullish situations depend upon Ethereum reclaiming key technical ranges and broader market sentiment turning extra favorable. Till then, the draw back dangers stay extra seen.
Within the quick time period, Ethereum’s trajectory seems carefully tied to macroeconomic cycles and Bitcoin’s positioning. A decisive transfer above $2,150 might mark the beginning of a restoration part. With out that, nonetheless, technical and structural strain is more likely to persist.
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