That was five years ago; it's no longer like that. Blockchain software design has progressed past its dial-up era. If you haven't noticed that, you just haven't been paying attention.
> That was five years ago; it's no longer like that.
Straight up misinformation, see here [0] that Ethereum gas fees were almost 10x just one year ago. If the prices have fallen, it is because 1. no one is using ethereum anymore, not like in its hayday, and 2. Ethereum price itself has fallen. It's not because of "technological innovation" as you'd like to pretend.
[0] https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_gas_price
You can do cheap swaps and borrows on Optimism, Arbitrum, Loopring, Polygon, Solana, etc. - none of those networks were mature in 2017. The cheap swaps are enabled in part by technological innovation that changes the blockchain execution model from an N-of-N model (where every node is required to re-execute a transaction to verify its validity) to a 1-of-N model reliant on proofs - notably optimistic rollups with fraud proofs (Optimism/Arbitrum) and zk-rollups with zero knowledge proofs (Loopring, with novel ZK-STARKs).
> It's not because of "technological innovation" as you'd like to pretend.
If you aren't actually following the innovation, don't pretend that there is no innovation. Either educate yourself, or don't make false claims about what the tech can or cannot do. Even Uniswap itself is multi-chain now, running on Polygon, Optimism and Arbitrum. But if you weren't following the tech, then you wouldn't necessarily know that.
Nobody mentioned Ethereum until you did. If Ethereum is the only project you're following, that explains why you have such a large knowledge gap.
Surely it's the people's fault that crypto can't offer a better rate than $50 fee per swap.