Standard Chartered has sharply lowered its 2025 price target for ether from $10,000 to $4,000, citing several factors, including Ethereum Layer 2 Base's growing dominance.

"Layer 2s, and Base in particular, now extract super-profits from the Ethereum ecosystem," Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick, said in a statement to The Block on Monday while sharing his new report titled Ethereum — Midlife Crisis. "We estimate that Base (the dominant Layer 2) has removed $50 billion of market cap from Ethereum alone," Kendrick said.

Ethereum has essentially "commoditized itself" within its self-created Layer 2 framework, with a growing share of transaction fees now bypassing the Layer 1 chain, according to Kendrick.

"The solution would be to tax Layer 2 super-profits in the same way governments sometimes charge super taxes for foreign-owned mining companies that extract excess profits. Unless that happens, ETH-BTC will keep going down," Kendrick said. However, he does not see taxation as a likely shift, leaving ether's long-term trajectory uncertain.

Ether is currently trading at around $1,900, over 60% down from its all-time high of approximately $4,878 in November 2021, according to The Block's ether price page.

Changes made to Ethereum over the past few years, "while perhaps necessary, have been value destructive," according to Kendrick.

These include The Merge, which removed Ethereum's unique proof-of-work status among smart contract peers; the Layer 2 concept that gave away value for free; and Dencun, which further empowered Layer 2s and created "super-profits" for them, Kendrick said.

Base, in particular, which crypto exchange giant Coinbase incubated, is passing all of the profit (fee revenue minus data recording fees) it extracts to Coinbase, "its corporate owner," Kendrick said.

"Layer 2s result in (1) lower GDP on the Ethereum mainnet and (2) lower fees, at least in the near term," Kendrick said. "However, the longer-term goal is to improve scalability and make fees more competitive, which should lead to more sustainable market share for Ethereum (and potentially increase future GDP and fees)."

Blockchain GDP is a measure that treats a blockchain like a nation-state, where the blockchain’s activity mirrors economic output, and its native token represents the local currency.

While Ethereum still dominates on several metrics — with shares of more than 50% of total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) assets, 57% of stablecoins, and 80% of tokenized assets — its dominance has been waning for some time.

For ETH to regain momentum, several factors could play a role. The continued expansion of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), where Ethereum holds an 80% market share, could boost demand for the network, according to Kendrick. Additionally, upcoming technical upgrades, such as Pectra in 2025, may improve scalability and fee dynamics.

Another potential solution would be for the Ethereum Foundation to implement economic reforms, such as taxing Layer 2 networks that benefit from Ethereum's infrastructure. However, Kendrick sees this as an unlikely shift.

Despite lowering its near-term outlook, Kendrick still expects ether to appreciate over time, forecasting a price of $7,500 by 2028-2029. However, without a fundamental change in Ethereum's fee structure or market positioning, he sees ether continuing to lag behind bitcoin, with the ETH/BTC ratio projected to decline to 0.015 by 2027, which would be the lowest level since early 2017.

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