Original source: Unchained Original article compiled by: Wu Says Blockchain

This episode of “The Chopping Block” focuses on Vitalik’s controversial remarks criticizing projects like Pump.fun on Farcaster, triggering value conflicts and public opinion shocks within the Ethereum community and external ecosystems such as Solana and Base. Four guests—Haseeb (Managing Partner at Dragonfly), Tom (DeFi Expert), Robert (Founder of Superstate), and Tarun (Founder and CEO of Gauntlet)—debate “the weight of Product-Market Fit (PMF) versus moral judgment,” exploring various angles such as technical neutrality, on-chain freedom, L1 governance philosophy, and the evolution of Ethereum narratives to discuss whether Vitalik has the authority to conduct a “moral judgment” on Web3 applications, and how the community understands the tension between the founder’s role and the industry’s spiritual leaders. Amid criticisms and resonance, the program also redefines Vitalik’s unique positioning in the crypto industry: ideals that do not sway with the wind and a stance that does not pander.

Vitalik criticized the moral debate triggered by Pump.fun.

Haseeb: Let’s talk about what has recently happened in the Ethereum community. Once again, the Ethereum circle has fallen into controversy. During this time, the Ethereum Foundation has undergone a lot of personnel changes.

The cause of this incident is a post from Vitalik on Farcaster (which is a “Cast” published on the Farcaster platform). In this cast, Vitalik criticizes some L1 blockchains for lacking a moral stance, meaning they “lack a philosophical foundation” and are unclear about why they want to build an L1 chain, as well as lacking a clear idea of what applications they should build and what role they hope the blockchain will play in the world.

He made an analogy, saying: Suppose C++ is a programming language designed by authoritarian, racist, fascist individuals. Would it become worse because of this? Probably not, because C++ is a general-purpose language that is not easily contaminated by ideology. But Ethereum L1 is different; if you fundamentally do not believe in decentralization, then you would not push for light clients, data availability layers, account abstraction, or spend ten years promoting the transition to PoS.

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

Haseeb: Then he gave examples of what he called “good” and “bad” — good ones are Railgun, Farcaster, Polymarket, Signald; bad ones are Pump.fun, Terra, and FTX. It was this segment that sparked intense controversy within the Ethereum community as well as the “non-Ethereum camp.” People began to question: Is Vitalik now setting the “moral standards” for the entire industry? Tarun, what do you think?

Tarun: First of all, I want to say that this controversy is not entirely a confrontation of “Ethereum vs non-Ethereum”; more accurately, it is three camps voicing their opinions: Ethereum, Solana, and Base. It’s surprising that Base and Solana are on the same side in this matter, opposing Vitalik’s labeling of Pump.fun as “negative”.

For example, Jesse Pollak (a key figure at Base) believes that Pump.fun is essentially a betting market that combines internet content and attention economy, and this type of gameplay is widely accepted in their ecosystem, with products like Zora following the same logic.

In the Solana community, the more prevalent value is “liberalism”: you can play if you want, even if it’s casino games, as long as you’re willing to take the risk; it’s your choice. In the Ethereum community, there is usually a stronger emphasis on the “moral positioning” of applications — for example, whether you are building privacy protection tools (like Railgun) or decentralized prediction markets (like Polymarket).

Haseeb: A good example that Vitalik mentioned is Polymarket and Farcaster, right?

Tarun: Yes. But what I particularly want to say is that regarding Railgun, I checked the on-chain data, and the user base is actually very small. I just want to ask, why can such an application be considered a “moral benchmark”? Is this evaluation standard also subject to selective bias?

Tom: There are few Railgun users, which may also be due to some “external reasons.”

The value conflict between the Ethereum and Solana communities regarding “acceptable applications”.

Tarun: Yes, there are certainly external factors behind this, but I want to point out that the current situation is a bit like the “Kingdom’s Sacred Words” – whatever Vitalik says is like proclaiming the righteous path. The problem is that this time even L2 application developers and DeFi practitioners within the Ethereum ecosystem are openly criticizing him, which indicates that his words are actually not welcomed even within Ethereum.

I think many Ethereum application developers also acknowledge that Pump.fun may have a certain “exploitative” nature, but at the same time, it has indeed brought about new interaction modes that people want to use. There is actually a deep dividing line within Ethereum — some believe that if an application could bring negative externalities to L1, it should be rejected, but in the Solana world, this viewpoint does not hold at all; people tend to “let the market decide for itself.”

Haseeb: Do you think he will use the same standards to evaluate Satoshi Dice from back then?

Tarun: Good question. Satoshi Dice was an early gambling application for Bitcoin, where users could gamble directly with BTC. I think Vitalik’s views have changed. Based on my observations of him over the past decade, I feel that he might not have been as negative about such things in the past, but his current stance is clearly much stricter.

However, I think the most interesting point this time is that many developers in the Ethereum ecosystem, who would normally never publicly criticize Vitalik, have collectively spoken out against him this time. This indicates that this line of “moral criticism” has indeed struck a chord with many people.

Haseeb: Tom, what do you think?

Tom: My view is that Vitalik has never been very good at “picking applications.” Some of the applications he likes are usually not very usable. While I understand his support for Polymarket, he used to like Augur as well, and I think he is essentially obsessed with prediction markets rather than having discernment about specific products.

To me, this feels a bit like “who cares”. Even if Vitalik has publicly expressed this viewpoint long ago, it wouldn’t change the technical direction of Ethereum or Solana. Solana wasn’t designed to support Pump.fun, and Ethereum wasn’t created to stop it. These things are more like the result of “ecological natural evolution” rather than products driven by the designers’ subjectivity.

Different chains have different atmospheres, which is essentially because people with different values are attracted to different ecosystems, rather than being caused by differences in underlying functions. Ultimately, this is more like a cultural agglomeration effect, rather than being determined by technical characteristics.

Does Vitalik have the qualifications to conduct a “moral judgment” on on-chain applications?

Haseeb: Anatoly (co-founder of Solana) responded to the controversy by saying: “When you don’t have product-market fit (PMF), you start to get into politics.” This is his comment on the entire event.

Tarun: However, I think the opposite is also true: sometimes, when you have too strong of a product-market fit, “politics” can also arise. You can look at Bridgewater Associates and Facebook; those places that have been successful to the extreme ultimately inevitably lead to infighting, policy-making, and power struggles. So I think Anatoly’s statement sounds a bit one-sided, as both situations in reality can lead to “politicization.”

Tom: I also find it quite ironic. Solana initially called for “bringing NASDAQ on-chain,” but now it has become “you are just the chain for meme coins.” Then the community started saying, “your current positioning is to create meme coins, you can’t change that until you die.” If you no longer want to play that role, others will say you are no longer important. This reminds me of the robot in “Rick and Morty” that was created just to pass the butter — “this is your mission.”

Haseeb: Robert, what do you think about this matter?

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

As for moral judgment, it is completely unimportant to me, and I haven’t really paid attention to what Vitalik said. I think this matter itself is not that relevant, and one could even say it is insignificant.

Haseeb: So do you think everyone’s “overreaction” to Vitalik’s statement is actually a kind of performance?

Robert: To some extent, yes. Especially for those who are not involved in ongoing projects, they don’t have much concrete work to do and can only create discussions around these controversial topics. We are already used to this situation.

Haseeb: Indeed, those who truly dedicate themselves to entrepreneurship have much more to worry about. Vitalik posted a “somewhat unpleasant” message on Farcaster, which isn’t really a big deal at all. If you’re bothered by such trivial matters every day, it means you have many more important things that you aren’t doing.

Evaluation and Understanding of Vitalik’s “Loyal to Ideals and Not Catering to the Market”

Haseeb: From a personal perspective, I actually have great respect for Vitalik’s consistency. This is not a recent change in his position; he has always been a “missionary” type of person. Since the founding of Ethereum, it has been an idealistic project for him, imbued with ideology, and it still is.

Many people feel disappointed in him because they hope he will become more like a “businessman” or “politician”. But Vitalik did not follow the path of Obama, who went from being a community organizer in Chicago to a Democratic leader, and then to the President of the United States. Many people would say, “Look, he speaks completely differently now than he did back then.” Vitalik is quite the opposite — he has never become the “President of Ethereum” and has never abandoned his early beliefs because of the project’s success. He hasn’t deleted his early blog posts, nor has he transformed into the captain of Ethereum’s cheerleading squad, only thinking about “how to make the price go up.”

Many others in the Ethereum ecosystem have indeed changed after their projects succeeded, but Vitalik has not. I respect his consistency. He would have said this five years ago, he would say it now, and he might still say it five years from now. He insists that Ethereum should serve a specific ideal, rather than being used for any random money-making purpose.

I think it’s like a president of a country saying, “I believe that casinos are bad for society, and we should reduce the number of casinos.” You might counter that lotteries and casinos bring huge revenue to the government. But he would say, “I know, but I still think it’s bad.” He has the right to think this way and the qualification to express it. I respect that.

Haseeb: In short, I understand why some people are dissatisfied with Vitalik’s remarks, but I believe this largely stems from a “misunderstanding.” They view Vitalik as the CEO of Ethereum rather than a visionary thinker.

In my opinion, he is more like Geoffrey Hinton of the cryptocurrency industry (the “godfather” of artificial intelligence). He is a source of ideas, but you don’t need to take what he says as law, nor do you need to seek his endorsement.

If you look at those projects that were publicly supported by Vitalik on Twitter, many of them have not achieved particularly great success. What he says does not mean he can determine the market direction. Vitalik is just Vitalik; he can say anything he wants, and I will always respect him — but that doesn’t mean I should hand over the direction of my product to him, nor does it mean you should do that.

Tom: I really liked a tweet response from Bingie where he said, “I’m sure Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the World Wide Web) isn’t a big fan of Pornhub either. It’s okay, Vitalik doesn’t like Pump.fun either.”

Haseeb: Yes, that perfectly summarizes it. Vitalik is the “elder” of the crypto industry; his liking or disliking your project does not determine your survival.

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