everyone really knew that ethereum didn't have much network utility once they discovered the NFT's were not on chain. It was a transaction proof they were buying. No use case was discovered by the market.
NFT is just one protocol among many others though, Ethereum utility is not lacking, we can see the smart contract being utilized heavily, so many other standard protocol other than NFT still being utilized heavily.
I don't think it lacks any network utility at all.
ETH just falling behind in speed and transaction cost but really if we are talking about utility, it's as good as any other smart contract capable blockchain that just got released recently.
even most of the newer blockchain derived their concept form ETH which ETH also derived its concept from a paper about smart contract.