The Fusaka upgrade to Ethereum, expected to go live in early December, promises to bring the world’s second-most valuable blockchain into an era of institutional-grade adoption. For far too long, Ethereum has been too slow and too costly to attract meaningful Wall Street business. That could change as Fusaka implements major improvements to how the network verifies and compresses data, increasing its speed and capacity by 10-fold.
Yet, it won’t be easy for Ethereum to maintain its lead among developers as the preferred chain to build on. Continued evolution will be essential for Ethereum to preserve its existing edge as a platform for on-chain finance.
### Ethereum’s Strengths: Uptime and Ecosystem Maturity
Ethereum remains the preferred platform among institutions for asset tokenization, DeFi applications, and stablecoin creation, thanks to its maturity.
One key strength is Ethereum’s **uptime**. Solana has never quite eclipsed Ethereum, partly because Solana has gone dark seven times over the past five years. In contrast, Ethereum — as noted by Thomas Lee, Chief Investment Officer of Fundstart Capital — has never crashed in its 10-year existence. Uptime might not be flashy, but it is highly valued by financial institutions as a core attribute that makes on-chain infrastructure reliable and attractive to market participants.
Another important strength is Ethereum’s **ecosystem maturity**. Institutions demand availability and maturity of developer tooling and talent. While Solana attracted the most new developers last year, Ethereum’s Solidity programming language still boasts the largest developer community by a wide margin—a lead recently confirmed in a16z’s *State of Crypto* report.
### Risks Facing Ethereum
Despite these strengths, Ethereum faces significant risks.
#### Scaling Challenges
One ongoing issue is the pace at which Ethereum is scaling, which has been “glacial” at best. Although Fusaka will be a major upgrade, it still won’t bring Ethereum and its rollup layers to the same transactions per second (TPS) as Solana.
In a fast-paced tech landscape where new breakthroughs emerge monthly, Ethereum is long overdue in meeting the scaling goals originally set by its inventor Vitalik Buterin in 2017. The aim was to match the scale of transactions on the Visa payment network, which currently averages around 24,000 TPS. By contrast, Ethereum’s layer-2 (L2) blockchains process between 1,000 and 10,000 TPS.
#### Competition from Heavyweights and Innovators
New blockchains are increasingly backed by publicly traded companies like Circle and Stripe. For example, Circle’s Arc and Stripe’s Tempo are layer-1 (L1) blockchains built as independent settlement layers, though they remain compatible with Ethereum’s Solidity and the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Another notable L1 is Hyperliquid, which is purpose-built as a decentralized exchange (DEX) for perpetual futures trading. While this is a niche market, Hyperliquid and perp DEX Aster earned 32% of all blockchain revenue in September, according to VanEck analysis, knocking Solana off its perch.
Just as Solana once threatened Ethereum’s dominance, Hyperliquid seems to be doing the same. Despite challenges—such as the crypto flash crash on October 10 that tested its resilience—Hyperliquid survived as designed. These developments are surely grabbing the attention of Ethereum developers.
### Ethereum’s Path Forward for Institutional Adoption
The blockchain space is witnessing a real race for developer mindshare. Well-financed entrants like Circle and Stripe are putting pressure on Ethereum, and innovation is spreading across multiple ecosystems. Liquidity is following this innovation, creating deep trading pools alongside new protocols.
Will Ethereum lose its edge? To avoid this, significant education about Ethereum is needed before it can be fully embraced by mainstream corporate treasurers and the general public.
For financial institutions choosing platforms for tokenization, trading, and yield generation, Ethereum’s human capital—its core contributors and ecosystem leaders—may ultimately be decisive. Historically, Ethereum’s core team has been idealistic yet capable, having successfully delivered major upgrades like the Merge. Now, Fusaka is poised to take the network to the next level.
To ensure the network’s health and future, Ethereum’s core contributors will need to elevate leaders who can foster multi-year relationships with institutional partners.
### Conclusion
For now, Ethereum remains top of mind as the foundation for institutional infrastructure in crypto. However, its slow pace of scaling and constant threat from upstart competitors mean it must keep evolving. Solana and other challengers will continue to push Ethereum to improve, and if those rivals address the institutional roadmap faster or more effectively, Ethereum risks losing its edge—regardless of how high the price of ETH climbs.
https://bitcoinethereumnews.com/ethereum/ethereum-is-like-a-shark-if-it-stops-moving-it-will-die/