Dev cycles are longer, tooling is complicated, gas fees are still expensive, and the community isn't easily wowed anymore. Most teams aren't ready for its discipline, and it's not beginners friendly. Solana, BSC, Sui attract rapid movers, speculative teams, foolish memecoin and frankly, projects either don't need extreme decentralization or are optimizing for short-term traction. It's a market of preferences, not just technology
Ethereum is where you go if you want permanence, not just virality. When they can start sooner, less expensive, and under less scrutiny on other chains, why would casual ventures, meme, low-effort NFTs, or quick DeFi forks chose Ethereum? Blockchains are cultures, yet people still treat them as platforms. Solana is a fast-food speed. Ethereum is slow-cooked. BSC is a reliable supermarket brand. Sui is still writing its cookbook
And another thing: attention has changed. The market is not in 2021 mode right now. It’s fragmenting. Particularly when venture money is flooding alt-L1 ecosystems with less expensive blockspace and more robust short-term incentives, founders are no longer fixated on Ethereum as the only game in town. It's about the narrative people want to follow, not about technology anymore. Ethereum's story is too mature, too sluggish, too cautious right now, but yet essential