That's where this ends up. Ethereum has too many centralising points of failure to survive in an adversarial environment, so the winning strategy is to let it get captured and become a banker coin.

Perhaps that's been the plan all along? I find it incredulous that only now developers and influencers are openly panicking about the risks of censorship, less than a month before the merge. These risks have been self-evident for years.

To be honest the only reason I pay attention to Ethereum is because I think it's likely to become an attack vector for Bitcoin. Big players are likely to back the protocol they control, and vilify Bitcoin as being anti-ESG / dinosaur tech / unsustainable fee market / etc.