"Not your keys, not your wallet"

Even if you store in cold storage, as a smaller investor and when it comes time to transfer out of cold storage, one will be hit with hefty gas fees. Without Ethereum there wouldn't be EVM-compatible chains, nor paving the way for DeFi, nor L2 scalability and security of ETH, so I'll give credit there. But day by day, I'm losing hope in Ethereum. Why should I like ETH, when it costs so much for the small guy and transitions out of PoW (making it more centralized than it already is)? This is not a rhetorical question, and I'm merely seeking to understand, not bash ETH.