Polkadots has been amazing lately, I think many are investing in this project now, Dot is really getting a lot of attention now. I cannot really say where this is leafing us to, it might end up been a possible contender with ethereum like OP said, only time will tell.
Yeah Ive noticed the hype on this project almost all of the projects related to their network are starting to pump and gain massively. I just wished I had some of those tokens too. If the polkadot network starting to run their own soon probably this will be the greatest contender on the ethereum network.