Nah, ESP32's have had ethernet capability for a while and ESP-IDF supports it well. I've been using one I built for 5+ years now. Unfortunately RMII (ethernet phy) interface takes up a lot of the GPIO pins. This part looks like it'll remedy that issue.

There's two ESP32 boards that have been around for a while with PoE:

- https://www.tme.com/us/en-us/details/esp32-poe/development-k... - https://wesp32.com/

I'm more hopeful for single-pair ethernet to gain momentum though! Deterministic, faster than CANBUS, single pair, with power delivery:

https://www.hackster.io/rahulkhanna/sustainable-real-time-la...