Vitalik criticized Pumpfun for causing controversy in values. Which is more important, PMF or morality?
Reprinted from chaincatcher
04/22/2025·27DCompiled by: Wu Shuo Blockchain
This issue of "The Chopping Block" focuses on Vitalik's controversial remarks on public criticism of projects such as Pump.fun on Farcaster, triggering conflicts in values and public opinion in the Ethereum community and external ecology such as Solana and Base. Four guests - Haseeb (Managing Partner at Dragonfly), Tom (DeFi expert), Robert (founder and CEO of Superstate), Tarun (founder and CEO of Gauntlet) - debated on "Which is more important than product market matching (PMF) or moral judgment", and explored from multiple perspectives such as technical neutrality, on-chain freedom, L1 governance philosophy and Ethereum narrative evolution, whether Vitalik has the right to "moral trial" of Web3 applications, and how the community understands the tension between the founder's role and the spiritual leader in the industry. In criticism and resonance, the program also redefines Vitalik's unique positioning in the crypto industry: ideals do not follow the wind, and positions do not cater to each other.
Vitalik posts criticizing the moral debate triggered by Pump.fun
Haseeb: Let's talk about what happened in the Ethereum community recently. Once again, the Ethereum circle is in controversy. During this period, the Ethereum Foundation has experienced many personnel changes.
The cause of this incident was a Forecaster post from Vitalik (that is, "Cast" published on the Farcaster platform). In this cast, Vitalik criticized some L1 blockchains for lacking moral stance, that is, "lack of philosophical foundation". They are not clear about why they want to build an L1 chain, nor do they have a clear concept to guide them what applications they should build and what role they hope blockchain can achieve in the world.
He gave an example: Assuming C++ is a programming language designed by totalitarian, racist, fascist, will it become worse? Probably not, because C++ is a common 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 drive light clients, data availability layers, account abstraction, or spend ten years advancing PoS transformation.
He then pointed out that 80% of the applications on Ethereum are special purpose, and the 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 philosophy in this regard.
Haseeb: Then he gave examples of so-called "good" and "bad" - the good ones are Railgun, Farcaster, Polymarket, Signald; the bad ones are Pump.fun, Terra and FTX . It is this period that has caused strong controversy among the Ethereum community and the "non-Ethereum camp". People are starting 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 a confrontation between "Ethereum vs. non-Ethereum". To be more precise, it is three camps that are speaking out: Ethereum, Solana, and Base. Base and Solana actually stood on the same side in this matter, opposing Vitalik labeling Pump.fun as "negative".
For example, Jesse Pollak (the core figure of Base) believes that Pump.fun is actually a betting market that combines Internet content and attention economy. This kind of gameplay is widely accepted in their ecosystem, and products such as Zora are the same logic.
And in the Solana community, the more common value is "liberalism": you can play it if you want, even if it's a casino game, as long as you are willing to take risks, this is your choice. In the Ethereum community, the "ethical positioning" of applications is usually emphasized - for example, what you want to build is privacy protection tools (like Railgun) or decentralized forecasting markets (like Polymarket).
Haseeb: Good examples Vitalik gives are Polymarket and Farcaster, right?
Tarun: Yes. But what I want to say is that I checked the data on the chain when he mentioned Railgun, and the number of users is actually very small. I just want to ask, why can such applications be considered a "moral benchmark"? Is this evaluation standard also selective bias?
Tom: Railgun has fewer users, and there may be some "external reasons".
**Ethereum and Solana community’s value conflict on “acceptable
applications”**
Tarun: Yes, of course there are external factors behind this, but I want to point out that the situation is a bit like the "Kingdom Word" - Vitalik said something, like proclaiming the right way. The problem is that even the L2 application developers and DeFi practitioners of the Ethereum ecosystem are publicly criticizing him, which shows that his words are actually not even popular within Ethereum.
I think many Ethereum application developers also admit that Pump.fun may have a certain "exploitation" nature, but at the same time, it does bring new interaction modes, and people just want to use it. There is actually a deep divisive line 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 people are more inclined to "let the market choose for themselves."
Haseeb: Do you think he would use the same criteria to evaluate Satoshi Dice back then?
Tarun: Good question. Satoshi Dice is an early gambling application for Bitcoin, and users can gambling directly with BTC. I think Vitalik's view has changed. Based on my observations of him over the past decade, I think he might have been less negative about this kind of thing in the past, but now he is obviously more strict.
However, I think the most interesting thing this time is that many developers in the Ethereum ecosystem who would never publicly criticize Vitalik, but this time they collectively spoke out against it, which shows that this "moral criticism" line has indeed hit many people.
Haseeb: Tom, what do you think?
Tom: My opinion is that Vitalik has never been very good at "picking apps". Some of the applications he likes are usually not very useful. Although I understand his support for Polymarket's position, he used to like Augur, and I think he is essentially obsessed with predicting the market rather than having a judgment on specific products.
To me, this thing feels a bit like "who cares". Even if Vitalik has long been publicly expressed, it will not change the technology route of Ethereum or Solana. Solana was not designed to support Pump.fun, and Ethereum was not created to stop it. These things are more like the result of "ecological natural evolution" than the product of the designer's subjective promotion.
Different chains have different atmospheres, essentially because people with different values are attracted by different ecology, not because of differences in underlying functions. After all, this is more like a cultural agglomeration effect than determined by technical characteristics.
Is Vitalik eligible for a “moral trial” of on-chain applications?
Haseeb: Anatoly (co-founder of Solana) responded to this controversy: "When you don't have a product market match (PMF), you start to engage in politics." This is his comment on the whole incident.
Tarun: But I think the opposite is true: sometimes, when you have too strong product market matching, there will also be "politics". You can look at Bridgewater Fund , Facebook, those where they have achieved their ultimate success will inevitably move towards infighting, policy making and power struggles. So I think Anatoly's words sound a bit one-sided, and both situations in reality will lead to "politicization".
Tom: I think this is ironic, too. Solana started out saying “Let NASDAQ be on the chain”, but now it has become “You are the chain of meme coin.” Then the community began to say, "Your current positioning is to make memes and coins, and you are not allowed to change until you die." If you are unwilling to play this role again, others will say that you are no longer important. This reminds me of the robot born to hand over butter in Rick and Morty — “That’s your mission.”
Haseeb: Robert, what do you think about this?
Robert: As an application developer, I actually don’t care what the “philosophical view” of Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, or even any chain is. What I care about is: What can I do on this chain? What are the DeFi applications? How is the throughput? Is the transaction cost high? Is the ecology integrated well?
As for moral judgment, it is completely unimportant to me, and I don't care much about what Vitalik said. I don't think this matter itself is that relevant, or even irrelevant.
Haseeb: So do you think everyone's "overreaction" to Vitalik's speech is actually a performance?
Robert: To some extent. Especially those who are not under construction projects, they don’t have much practical things to do, so they can only create discussions around these controversial topics. We are no longer surprised by this situation.
Haseeb: Indeed, people who really engage in entrepreneurship have to worry about a lot more things. Vitalik posted a "slightly unpleasant" post on Forecaster, which is not a big deal. If you are troubled by this every day, it means you still have many more important things you are not doing.
**Evaluation and understanding of Vitalik 's "loyal to ideals and not
cater to the market"**
Haseeb: Personally, I actually respect Vitalik's consistency very much. This is not his recent change of position. He has always been a "missionary" type of person. Since the founding of Ethereum, this has been an ideological idealist project for him, and it is still the case.
Many people are disappointed with him because they want him to become a more "entrepreneur" or "politician". But Vitalik did not step by step from a community organizer in Chicago to a Democratic leader and then the president of the United States like Obama. Many people will say, "Look, he is no longer the same person he was back then." Vitalik is just the opposite - he has never become the "President of Ethereum" and has never given up his early beliefs just because of the success of the project. He did not delete his early blog posts, nor did he transform into the gas station captain of Ethereum and the "ETH №1 cheerleader", and he was full of thoughts on "how to make the price rise".
Many other people in the Ethereum ecosystem did change after the project was successful, but Vitalik did not. I respect his consistency. He would say this five years ago, now he would say this, and he might say this five years later. He insisted that Ethereum should serve a specific concept rather than “do whatever you want to make money”.
I think it's like a president of a country saying, "I think casinos are not good for society, we should reduce the number of casinos." You may retort that lottery and casinos bring huge revenue to the government. But he would say, "I know, but I still think it's not good." He has the right to think so and has the right to express it like this. I respect this.
Haseeb: Anyway, I understand why some people are dissatisfied with Vitalik's speech, but I think that mostly comes from a "misunderstanding". They view Vitalik as the CEO of Ethereum, rather than a thinker who takes the lead in philosophy.
In my opinion, he is more like Geoffrey Hinton (the "godfather" in the field of artificial intelligence). He is the source of thought, but you don’t need to regard what he says as the law, nor do you need to obtain his endorsement.
You look at projects that have been supported by Vitalik's public promotion, and many of them have not achieved particularly great success. What he said does not mean that it can determine the direction of the market. Vitalik is Vitalik. He can say anything he wants to say, and I will always respect him -but this does not mean that I want to give him the direction of my product, nor does it mean that you should do this.
Tom: I liked a response from Bingie, who said, “I’m sure Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the World Wide Web) is not a big fan of Pornhub either. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if Vitalik doesn’t like Pump.fun.”
Haseeb: Yes, it perfectly summarizes this. Vitalik is an "elder" in the crypto industry. He doesn't need to like your projects, nor does it mean that he doesn't like it, and you can't survive.
