Yeah. Nothing even in the far horizon indicates that eth will have a major run especially this year. It's even lagging behind ripple so what more for bitcoin. I'm not expecting much from eth this year it's still one of my top coins for the long term.
for the equivalent of bitcoin, maybe it won't happen, right you said it was even impossible. ethereum is now very bad, maybe being able to survive as a top market asset until the end of this year is already very good. all can help ethereum if the market moves to improve faster than just staying in place.
in any case, we are still awaiting the renewal of Constantinople, which the team postpones from time to time. Although despite the results, in 2019 we still will not see the ethereum as the leader of the cryptocurrency market. Bypassing Bitcoin will be hard even in the following years.