Reading replies to the comparison one thing really distinguishes $ETH from $ATOM:
Ethereum has very strong community and believers and this matters the most in this memetic industry.
The worst is apathy: when one criticizes an asset and no one cares.
Ethereum is not here.
The main counter-arguments mentioned in the comments:
- ETH dominates DeFi TVL, RWAs, L2 capital. ATOM never had that scale.
- ETH is gas, collateral, staking, treasury, ETF asset. ATOM was just staking + governance.
- BlackRock, Robinhood, Wall Street back ETH. Cosmos never escaped crypto native ppl.
- L2s exist because of demand overflow, and L1 still gets value back through blobs and security.
- ETH has Lindy and the largest dev mindshare.
All fair points about Ethereum as a platform. Taxing L2s, increasing txs to the L1 would flip $ETH narrative quickly.
Tbh I still hold some ETH and want it to succeed.
The future dominated by corpo slop chains isn't what excites me.