Jan van Eck, CEO of investment firm VanEck, expressed doubts that spot Ethereum ETFs would receive approval in May. He pointed out that the SEC has not been active for a long time on the list of seven pending applications, including applications from major companies such as BlackRock, Fidelity, ARK 21Shares and VanEck.

Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted that the lack of “critical feedback” from the regulator, even in face-to-face meetings, suggests the approval rate is low, likely around 35%. “There’s no reason why the SEC did absolutely nothing for months when we knew this was coming,” said James Seyffart, another Bloomberg ETF analyst.

It would be an oversimplification to attribute Ethereum’s recent decline solely to low expectations of spot Ethereum ETF approval. Because the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) also lost 14% of its value in the five days until April 13. In a more detailed analysis, it is necessary to compare Ethereum’s performance with its direct competitors, especially those dealing with decentralized applications (DApps).

Since April 9, Ethereum’s 15% decline was more pronounced than the 8% decline in BNB at $545 and the 10% decline in Tron (TRX) at $0.1128. In contrast, Solana (SOL) experienced a much larger decline ($139). However, these figures do not necessarily reflect activity levels within each network’s DApps. Therefore, it is important to examine total value locked (TVL) trends across these networks. According to DefiLlama, the TVL of the Ethereum network reached 16.4 million ETH on April 15, reaching its highest level in more than 13 months, marking a 14.8% increase on a monthly basis. In comparison, BNB Chain’s TVL remained stable at 9.5 million BNB, while Tron’s deposits fell 1% in the 30 days through April 15.

According to DappRadar, the Ethereum blockchain maintained its dominant position with 7-day DApp volume of $45.7 billion, significantly outperforming its main rival BNB Chain. Moreover, despite a modest 3% decline in active addresses (UAW), used as an indicator of user interaction with DApps, since April 9, Ethereum’s decline was less severe compared to BNB Chain, which dropped 7%.

On April 16, Ethereum’s option slope metric reached its highest level in more than two months, entering bear market territory after hovering around 7% for four days. This trend shows that whales and market makers are demanding premiums for downside price protection on ETH.

On the one hand, the anticipation of a spot Ethereum ETF decision in May is supporting the Ethereum price and appears to be outperforming its rivals even as the network’s on-chain activity has stalled. However, as derivatives markets indicate, the increasing risk aversion among professional traders on April 16 urges not to ignore the potential for Ethereum price to fall further below $2,900.