I do not believe an object goes through a progression in stages of being a store of value, then being a medium of exchange, and then finally a unit of account in order to become money. Rather, these 3 are different aspects of the same thing that is money and I believe they come into existence together at the same time. If a seashell is treated to have a store of value, it must also have an accounting unit and already being exchanged by 2 or more persons at the same time. These aspects do not work separately.
Indeed, ETH must be engineered as a form of money, and have substantial monetary value associated with it. Otherwise, anyone can sabotage and hijack the network from within at minimal cost without even the need to invest into 51% mining power (in PoW) nor stake any ETH (in PoS). This can be done by any rogue agent creating his own 3rd-party token and then manipulate such token to an artificially elevated level to create any form of monetary significance and acceptance. Once such elevated state is reached, anything is possible from there as the network structure allows it. Binance coin is an example of a token (not coin, even though it has the word “coin” in its name) being marketed and promoted as money because of its burn policy. But its burn policy depends on business profit. And business profit depends on how sustainable is the business. If the business flounders due to competition, i.e. more exchanges cropping up with better services and attractive trading fees, then BNB may eventually deflate. In the long run, I do not see BNB to stay, i.e. another way of saying the bullish trend is short-term. So if Ethereum Foundation does not focus on promoting ETH as a form of money, then all its effort spent on scaling, governance, and security may be just a waste, as Binance coin and many others will persist and overshadow ETH in authority eventually. You can create a deflationary economy just the same with money, not necessarily possible only with fuel.
Of course, there can be many ways of hijacking the Ethereum network beyond controlling 51% mining power. And creating a 3rd-party token and manipulate it upward, monetarily, is one such ways, cheaply, as long as the network allows it, by way of making ETH potentially “subservient” to any non-native coin or token in its own network. Once a non-native coin or token become significant enough (monetarily and economically), the network’s governance and security model will revolve around it. That is why I said effort on scaling, governance, and security would be a waste if such situation is allowed. Any other way to resolve this may be far less than ideal and lack elegance than making ETH an official reserve currency.
Clarification: “Making ETH an official reserve currency” as in making ETH a primary medium of exchange within the Ethereum network, regardless of whether it is marketed as money or fuel, in a way that it is not subservient nor subordinated to any “coin” or token made from the network that is not native to it, in any way related to scaling, governance, security, and economics of the network.
“What’s the real value of all the Eth-based tokenizable micro-markets out there?”
Assuming your wording is correct, then whatever the real value is, is at micro-level, i.e. insignificant.
Otherwise, the total real value of all ETH-based tokens should at best be a subset of ETH. And if the network structure allows them to be a “superset” of ETH, then I deem the EF decision-making to be very unwise.