At this point Ethereum has a bunch of applications on top with quite a bit of demand, and you need ETH to pay the transaction fees, a portion of which are burne

At this point Ethereum has a bunch of applications on top with quite a bit of demand, and you need ETH to pay the transaction fees, a portion of which are burned. Once proof-of-work is discarded early next year, the supply will start shrinking, and it'll be possible to value ETH like shares in a company doing stock buybacks. So I'd say that doesn't look much like a Ponzi scheme.