Vitalik's criticism of Pumpfun sparked heated discussion: Which is more important, catering to the market or moral sense?

Compilation | Wu Talks about Blockchain

Original link:

https://x.com/_choppingblock/status/1912899938238820599

This episode of "The Chopping Block" focuses on Vitalik's controversial remarks on Farcaster criticizing projects such as Pump.fun, which triggered value conflicts and public opinion shocks in the Ethereum community and external ecosystems such as Solana and Base. Four guests — Haseeb (Dragonfly managing partner), Tom (DeFi expert), Robert (Superstate founder), Tarun (Gauntlet founder and CEO) — debated on "Which is more important, product market fit (PMF) or moral judgment?" From multiple perspectives such as technical neutrality, on-chain freedom, L1 governance philosophy, and Ethereum narrative evolution, they explored whether Vitalik has the right to "morally judge" Web3 applications, and how the community understands the tension between the role of the founder and the spiritual leader of the industry. In the criticism and resonance, the program also redefined Vitalik's unique position in the crypto industry: ideals do not follow the wind, and positions do not cater to others.

Vitalik criticizes the moral debate caused by Pump.fun

Haseeb: Let's talk about what's happened recently in the Ethereum community. Once again, the Ethereum community is caught up in controversy. The Ethereum Foundation has experienced a lot of personnel changes during this period.

The cause of this incident was a Forecaster post from Vitalik (also known as a "Cast" published on the Farcaster platform). In this cast, Vitalik criticized some L1 blockchains for lacking a moral stance, that is, "lacking a philosophical foundation", not knowing why they want to build an L1 chain, and not having a clear concept to guide them on what applications they should build and what role they hope blockchain will achieve in the world.

He gave an analogy, saying: If C++ is a programming language designed by totalitarians, racists, and fascists, will it become worse? Probably not, because C++ is a universal language and is not easily contaminated by ideology. But Ethereum L1 is different. If you don’t believe in decentralization at all, you won’t promote light clients, data availability layers, account abstraction, or spend ten years promoting PoS transformation.

He went on to point out that 80% of the applications on Ethereum are special purpose, and what application you build depends largely on what role you think Ethereum should play in the world. Therefore, it is very important to have the right concept in this regard.

Haseeb: Then he gave examples of so-called "good" and "bad" - Railgun, Farcaster, Polymarket, Signald are good; Pump.fun, Terra and FTX are bad. It was this paragraph that sparked strong controversy in the Ethereum community and the "non-Ethereum camp". People began to question: Is Vitalik now setting "ethical standards" for the entire industry? Tarun, what do you think?

Tarun: First of all, I want to say that this controversy is not entirely about “Ethereum vs. non-Ethereum”. To be more precise, it is three camps speaking out: Ethereum, Solana, and Base. Base and Solana actually stood on the same side in this matter, opposing Vitalik’s labeling of Pump.fun as “negative”.

For example, Jesse Pollak (a core figure at Base) believes that Pump.fun is actually a betting market that combines Internet content with the attention economy. This gameplay is widely accepted in their ecosystem, and products like Zora follow the same logic.

In the Solana community, the more common value is "liberalism": you can play if you want, even casino games, as long as you are willing to take risks. In the Ethereum community, the "moral positioning" of the application is usually emphasized - for example, you want to build a privacy protection tool (like Railgun) or a decentralized prediction market (like Polymarket).

Haseeb: The good examples Vitalik gave were Polymarket and Farcaster, right?

Tarun: Yes. But I want to say that he mentioned Railgun. I checked the on-chain data and found that the number of users is actually very small. I want to ask, why can such an application be considered a "moral benchmark"? Does this evaluation standard also have selective bias?

Tom: Railgun has few users, and there may be some "external reasons".

Ethereum and Solana communities clash over acceptable use

Tarun: Yes, there are certainly external factors behind this, but I would like to point out that the current situation is a bit like "Kingdom Word" - Vitalik said something, like declaring the right way. The problem is that this time even the L2 application developers and DeFi practitioners in the Ethereum ecosystem are publicly criticizing him, which shows that his words are actually not popular even within Ethereum.

I think a lot of Ethereum application developers also admit that Pump.fun may have a certain "exploitative" nature, but at the same time, it does bring new interaction modes, and people just want to use it. There is actually a deep divide within Ethereum - some people believe that if an application may bring negative externalities to L1, it should be denied, but in the Solana world, this view is not valid at all, and everyone prefers to "let the market choose for itself."

Haseeb: Do you think he would use the same criteria to evaluate Satoshi Dice?

Tarun: Good question. Satoshi Dice is an early Bitcoin gambling application where users can gamble directly with BTC. I think Vitalik’s views have changed. Based on my observations of him over the past decade, I think he may not have been so negative about this kind of thing before, but his stance is obviously stricter now.

However, I think the most interesting thing this time is that many developers in the Ethereum ecosystem who would never publicly criticize Vitalik have collectively voiced their opposition this time, which shows that this line of "moral criticism" has indeed touched many people.

Haseeb: Tom, what do you think?

Tom: My opinion is that Vitalik has never been very good at "selecting applications". Some of the applications he likes are usually not very useful. Although I understand his position in supporting Polymarket, he also liked Augur before. I think he is essentially obsessed with predicting the market, rather than having judgment on specific products.

To me, this is a bit of a “who cares” thing. Even if Vitalik had publicly expressed this view long ago, it would not change the technical path of Ethereum or Solana. Solana was not designed to support Pump.fun, and Ethereum was not designed to prevent it. These things are more like the result of “natural ecological evolution” rather than the product of subjective promotion by designers.

Different chains have different atmospheres, essentially because people with different values are attracted to different ecosystems, rather than due to differences in underlying functions. In the final analysis, this is more like a cultural agglomeration effect rather than a technical feature.

Is Vitalik qualified to conduct “moral judgment” on on-chain applications?

Haseeb: Anatoly’s (Solana co-founder) response to this controversy was, “When you don’t have product-market fit (PMF), politics starts to happen.” This was his comment on the whole thing.

Tarun: But I think the opposite is also true: sometimes, when you have too strong a product-market fit, politics will also appear. You can look at Bridgewater Fund and Facebook, where those extremely successful places inevitably end up infighting, policy making, and power struggles. So I think Anatoly's words sound a bit one-sided. In reality, both situations will lead to "politicization."

Tom: I think this is ironic, too. Solana started out by saying, “Let NASDAQ be on the chain,” and now it’s become, “You are the chain for the meme coin.” Then the community started saying, “Your current position is to be a meme coin, and you are not allowed to change until you die.” If you don’t want to play this role anymore, people will say you are no longer important. This reminds me of the robot in Rick and Morty that was born only to pass butter — “This is your mission.”

Haseeb: Robert, what do you think about this?

Robert: As an application developer, I don’t really care about the “philosophy” of Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, or any other chain. What I care about is: What can I do on this chain? What are the DeFi applications? What is the throughput? Is the transaction cost high? Is the ecosystem well integrated?

As for moral judgment, it is not important to me at all, and I don’t care too much about what Vitalik said. I think this matter itself is not so relevant, or even irrelevant.

Haseeb: So you think people’s “overreaction” to Vitalik’s comments is actually a performance?

Robert: To some extent. Especially those who are not building projects, they don't have much to do, so they can only create discussions around these controversial topics. We are used to this.

Haseeb: Indeed, people who really start a business have much more to worry about. Vitalik posted a "slightly unpleasant" post on Forecaster, which is not a big problem at all. If you are bothered by this thing every day, it means that you have many more important things to do.

Evaluation and understanding of Vitalik’s “staying true to his ideals and not catering to the market”

Haseeb: Personally, I respect Vitalik's consistency. This is not a recent change of stance. He has always been a missionary. Since the creation of Ethereum, it has been an ideological and idealistic project for him, and it remains so today.

Many people are disappointed with him because they hope he will become more of an "entrepreneur" or "politician". But Vitalik did not go from being a community organizer in Chicago to becoming a leader of the Democratic Party and then the President of the United States, as Obama did. Many people would say, "Look, he doesn't talk like he did back then." Vitalik is just the opposite - he never became the "President of Ethereum" and never gave up his early beliefs because of the success of the project. He also did not delete his early blog posts, and did not transform himself into the captain of Ethereum's gas station or the "ETH №1 cheerleader", with his mind full of "how to make the price go up".

Many other people in the Ethereum ecosystem did change after the success of the project, but Vitalik did not. I respect his consistency. He would say this five years ago, he would say this now, and he might still say this five years from now. He insists that Ethereum should serve a specific concept, not "anything that can make money with it."

I think it's like the president of a country saying, "I think casinos are bad for society and we should reduce the number of casinos." You might argue that lotteries and casinos bring huge revenue to the government. But he will say, "I know, but I still think it's bad." He has the right to think so and to express it so. I respect that.

Haseeb: In short, I understand why some people are dissatisfied with Vitalik’s remarks, but I think that this is mostly due to a “misunderstanding.” They regard Vitalik as the CEO of Ethereum, rather than a thinker with a philosophy first.

In my opinion, he is more like the Geoffrey Hinton of the crypto industry (the "godfather" in the field of artificial intelligence). He is the source of ideas, but you don't have to take what he says as law, nor do you need his endorsement.

If you look at the projects that Vitalik has publicly promoted and supported, many of them have not achieved particularly great success. What he says does not mean that he can determine the direction of the market. Vitalik is Vitalik, he can say whatever he wants, and I will always respect him - but this does not mean that I will let him decide the direction of my product, nor does it mean that you should do so.

Tom: I love this tweet from Bingie in response, where he said, "I'm pretty sure Tim Berners-Lee isn't a big fan of Pornhub either. That's OK, and it's OK if Vitalik doesn't like Pump.fun."

Haseeb: Yes, that sums it up perfectly. Vitalik is the “elder” of the crypto industry. He doesn’t need to like your project, but it doesn’t mean you can’t survive if he doesn’t like it.