Well, that's simply not true.

Price wise didn't performed well, that's the only thing.
But this cycle so far only Solana and a few outliers (apart from memes) had this run.

It's being used a lot (more than parking wealth rather than quick trades), but so far big guys go there.

Regarding being expensive, it's true that's the most expensive chain so far, but gas prices went down +90% with the last updates. A regular tx now costs 0.5-1$. Long gone are the days of +10$ fees (at least for now).

And regarding Vitalik controlling ETH... in my opinion it's simply Bitcoin maxis fud. They are so annoying btw