The market value of ether is less than that of the other two.
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According to analysts from JP Morgan, the upcoming upgrade of the ethereum's ledger could give rival networks a chance to eat away at its lead in the market.
The ethereum network is used the most for Defi, which aims to cut banks out of financial services.
The upgrade to the ethereum network is drawing investors to it because they believe it could reduce costs and congestion.
The analysts said in a note that they believe the shift from proof of work to proof of stake will encourage more investors to bet on the network.
The "sharding" stage of the etherum 2.0 upgrade isn't expected to take place until 2023. They pointed out that there is an opening for other app networks.
The analysts said that the optimistic view about ethereum's dominance is at risk.
The scaling of the ethereum network, which is necessary for the ethereum network to maintain its dominance, might arrive too late.
The bank's team noted that over the past year, ethereum lost ground in the Defi market share, though the pace has slowed recently. At the start of the year, it was close to 100% share.
The note said that the relative valuation of the two companies has been similar.
A new crop of new blockchains are making headway, including terra, BSC, solana, fantom and tron. Growth was driven by more funding and the use of incentives.
The risk for the network is that competitors' ecosystems will grow so much that activity won't return to the network.
"In our opinion, the outcome of the race that ethereum is in is far from being given."
The launch of ether gave it a head-start over other De-fi token. The networks can be used to build applications for financial services and to execute smart contracts, which can be done automatically once preset criteria are met.
Vitalik Buterin acknowledged this week that the transition to the new version of ethereum is just 50% of the way there.
The first phase of the shift was completed in late 2020 and the second phase is due this year. The third and final phase, which will distribute execution to tens of "shard" chains, was originally expected to be done in 2022, but is now expected to be done next year.
JP Morgan is concerned about the brief period between now and the complete completion of the update.
We are at least a year away from the full scaling of the network. The team said that the risk is that the network will lose market share against other networks.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the market value of ether is about half of that of the other two. At last check Thursday, the price of ether was down 12% at $3,368.
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