“AJC,” a research manager at Messari, made the claim on X, pointing to Ethereum network fees, which totaled just $39.2 million in August — down more than 40% from a year earlier and about 20% lower than July.

Ethereum bulls pushed back, highlighting rising metrics such as app revenues, active addresses, transactions, and ongoing improvements in Layer-2 scaling. Henrik Andersson, CIO at Apollo Crypto, argued that it’s hard to call Ethereum doomed when “the ecosystem remains vibrant, with stablecoin supply, throughput, and active addresses all at or near record highs.”

But AJC countered that app revenues are driven almost entirely by Circle and Tether, while other KPIs have little direct impact on ETH’s value. He defended using fee revenue as a key valuation metric, insisting it’s the largest demand driver for ETH — and right now, it’s “trending toward zero.”

Critics disagreed, stressing that Ethereum should be valued like Bitcoin — more as a commodity than a tech stock — meaning revenue isn’t the right lens.

The debate touches on a long-running issue in the crypto space: whether Layer-1 tokens like ETH and SOL should carry a “monetary premium.” That narrative is increasingly challenged as major players like Google and Stripe explore corporate chains that bypass ETH for fees. Circle’s Arc, for example, will use USDC instead.

A big factor behind Ethereum’s revenue decline was the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which dramatically reduced transaction costs for Layer-2 networks.