IMO, most of the miners after the merge, they've turned off their rigs and just waiting for that opportunity for another coin to be mined. It's still testing the waters before they come and turn on their rigs again.
About the global issue, it has its part on the market as to why we're experiencing this downturn. It's very likely that due to it, most of the markets have been affected by it and we can't do anything about it.
ETH has a lot of stuff attached/built on it, some of its mass comes from being in the first projects of its kind and successfully taking off.
I don't see a worthy successor yet - successor to POW + a Network with multiple layers like ETH, there are pretenders but they couldn't beat ETH and wont be as it switched to POW basically retiring on its own terms.
Well, too many projects that have tried to be par with Ethereum but really none of them can beat it. And even though it's now a POS, still, that's what they're going to aim for, to beat Ethereum.
There's no other way for them to beat it as of the moment but just by making their project more extraordinary than it was before.