What is the future of Ethereum if gas fees are this high now, and Defi adoption is still this low?

Crypto adoption progressing over time, but it is still pretty low. On top of that, most of crypto adoption is really Cefi adoption and not Defi. Cefi accounts for a large majority of crypto trading. This is to say that much of the crypto activity takes place off-chain on Cefi servers and not on the blockchain. And yet still Ethereum fees are high.

Further, I am calling Ethereum fees high but they are still relatively low. I have seen users reporting paying up to $50 and $80 during the 2021 run. Call these one-off examples if you want but for the 2nd half of 2021 the mean transaction fee was around $35 dollars per Cryptoquant. Over the entire year it was a bit lower at about $20-25. We are still in a "bear market" and fees are already approaching these levels. The average fees are 6x higher than they were 1 month ago.