The Ethereum price will reach a fresh all-time high this year of US$5,000 by the end of the year, but will continue to lose market share to competing smart contract platforms, a panel of experts has predicted.

The Finder.com.au panel pegged Ethereum to close at the year at US$5,114, 20.8 per cent higher than the US$4,234 it was trading at Tuesday morning.

They saw the Ethereum price jumping to US$15,364 by 2025, and rising to US$50,788 by the end of 2030.

CoinFlip founder and chief advisor Daniel Polotsky predicted ETH would end the year at $4,500, but thought its long-term growth could surpass that of Bitcoin’s over the next decade.

“Ethereum does a better job of supporting development on its blockchain and will have a more lightweight proof of stake mining model than Bitcoin [which] means that it can potentially be the backbone of Web 3.0,” he said.

Origin Protocol co-founder Joshua Fraser said Ethereum is becoming used more and more widely.

“Ethereum is currently hosting an already large but still quickly growing alternative financial system in decentralized finance or DeFi.

“Eventually Ethereum will be one of the main financial settlement layers of the world. ETH price will reflect this future reality,” he said.

A few panellists based their bullish predictions on ETH’s first-mover advantage, but Boston Trading CFO Jeremy Britton wasn’t so sure.

“ETH has first-mover advantage, but so did Ford Motors,” he told Finder. “There are many great projects snapping at ETH’s heels, with greater speed and lower cost.”

On average, the panellists thought Ethereum would lose 30 per cent of its market share to competing platforms like Solana, Terra and Avalanche over the next 12 months.

Thirteen per cent of panelists thought Solana would eventually overtake Ethereum, and 15 per cent of panellists thought another smart contract platform would. Avalanche and Cardano were mentioned as possibilities.

“There's room for alternative smart-contract platforms in the market, making other trade-offs than Ethereum," said Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik.

"But Ethereum's network effects are exceptionally strong, making it very hard to de-throne."

The full report can be read here.

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