You say that: "Ethereum is 3 years behind in terms of tech", but what projects do you compare?
With a binance smart chain with 21 validators?
https://stakers.info/The Tron ecosystem is very fast, but it is also a centralized system where most of the validators belong to the project investors.
If you look at all the known blockchains, there are few really decentralized ones: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin. POS blockchains are centralized, and ethereum developers are trying to make their blockchain as decentralized as possible.
Being more decentralized and being more behind are not the same things. I do believe that ETH is not behind, like for example people say "if SOL can do 65k tps then why can't ETH do that", but the reality is that even at quarter of that number SOL got a problem, which is proof that the concept does support such high numbers but when it comes to reality it fails miserably, ETH doesn't have that chance because it is used like crazy and even one day being down would mean billions of dollars worth problems.
This is why they are at the top of the technological development, not only they are good, but they are proven to be best at that level, no other project proved themselves at that level before, always promoting how awesome they are with less than 10% what ETH has to deal with.