The debate about whether Ethereum could be used as the Swiss Army in the crypto-verse has rekindled after DeFi, gaming and NFT have enjoyed a surge in popularity.

But the current situation isn’t very encouraging. Retail users, techies, large investors, and techies are starting to be concerned by the impact of excessive fees, long confirmation periods, slow updates, and slow approvals.

Ethereum developers should focus on L1

Despite the challenges of providing a satisfying user experience, Ethereum developers have begun to look at rival blockchains to increase their market share and expand their reach.

Blockchains like Solana, Binance Smart Chain, and Avalanche have seen a significant rise during 2021, cementing themselves as more efficient alternatives to Ethereum and its upgrade to Proof of Stake that is not quite there yet.

According to Nicholas Merten, creator of the YouTube channel DataDash, Ethereum’s advantage of being the blockchain used by all is losing ground as time goes on.

Merten explained in a Twitter thread that arguments for Ethereum might not be able to hold up over time. Merten believes that L2s (scalability options built on top the original blockchain) may not be practical and will have little impact on adoption.

4.) L1 should be much less

Rollups can reduce costs (L2) but only if more users are moving from L1 to L2.

We need large players to sponsor the cost for bridging for existing users, and reward programs to LPs who move up to L2, etc.

— Nicholas Merten (@Nicholas_Merten) November 20, 2021

Merten, for example, claims that people would prefer to pay $0. 01 in Solana fees instead of paying $0. 04 to transact on Polygon –the cheapest L2 solution on Ethereum.

For Merten, Ethereum developers need to focus on making L1s (on chain transactions) more efficient and cheaper. People will have to pay higher fees as smart contracts become more complicated.

Merten believes Ethereum needs better marketing. A team should not only be skilled in technical development, but also capable of keeping the community excited and engaged.

Three Arrows Capital Drops ETH Bets on Avalanche and ETH (AVAX )

This view is apparently spreading among institutional investors.

Within hours of Merten’s tweet Zhu Su, CEO of Three Arrows Capital, announced that he had dropped Ethereum to concentrate on Avalanche, a rival blockchain. His Twitter bio describes him as an “AVAX, crypto and DeFi (and) NFTs investor.”

Zhu Su’s words were not exactly beautiful:

Yes, I have given up on Ethereum despite having supported it in the past.

Yes Ethereum abandoned its users, despite having supported them in the past.

It is gross to sit around and watch the burn while concocting purity test formulas, when no newcomers have the means to afford it.

— Zhu Su (@zhusu) November 21, 2021

Zhu Su explains how Ethereum, in current conditions, benefits OGs. However, in a global adoption environment with new users trying out the technology, prohibitive fees for network access should not be a problem.

Zhu Su isn’t the only one. Antonio Juliano, the founder of dYdX a DeFi protocol that runs on Ethereum, agreed with him even though his harsh words were painful.

[risky tweet of the day 🙈]

This is a harsher statement than I would like to make, but I do agree

.

Ethereum did not execute in the last few years. I can’t think of a single 10x useful improvement Ethereum has made in the past *4 yearshttps://t.co/TpS6obIVCj

— Antonio | dYdX (@AntonioMJuliano) November 21, 2021

Ethereum claims to resolve these problems by implementing Ethereum 2.0 a Proof-of-Stake Blockchain that will have very low fees and a high level of scalability.

However, this solution is taking a long , so large investors can only hope it doesn’t take too much time once it launches.