Keep in mind, Ripple announced they are entering into DeFi. (Smart contracts, etc.) Meaning ETH will have a direct competitor.
"Ethereum uses a public blockchain, which means anyone, any time can become a node of the network. Ethereum has a block generation time of 15 seconds which makes it nearly 4 times slower than Ripple. During January 2018, its transaction fees went up to $4, which makes it impractical for microtransactions.
The main problem that Ethereum is facing is the lack of scalability. Ethereum can only do 15-20 transactions per second, which is absolutely abysmal when compared to Ripple. Ethereum is currently working on layer-1 and layer-2 scalability techniques like sharding, Raiden, and Plasma to help rectify this situation."