Should Public Chain Foundations Open Their Doors to Meme Projects?

Author: Eric, Foresight News

Original Title: Must Public Chains Embrace the Meme Trend?

On October 21, cannabis farming simulator Addicted posted a long thread on X complaining about the unfair treatment it received in the Ethereum and Base ecosystems. It stated that there is a "top-down" culture in the Ethereum ecosystem: if you are not part of the core circle or are not developing products recognized by the core developers, you will not receive any support. Addicted believes there is a serious disconnect between developers and users in the Ethereum ecosystem. Most developers do not approve of speculation and continue to build products they think are good, rather than letting users and the community organically form trends.

After switching to Solana, Addicted's highest income in 48 hours reached $3.5 million, and the Solana Foundation proactively offered support, helping the team promote their product. They do not judge the quality of applications but instead let developers experiment freely. This open atmosphere surprised and greatly benefited the Addicted team.

In response, a member of IPX Labs, a Move ecosystem Web3 solution provider and developer of a Sui ecosystem meme/launchpad project (X handle: @josemvcerqueira), expressed agreement and tactfully pointed out that Sui also has a similar issue as Ethereum, where projects are judged based on personal preferences.

Perhaps having experienced some setbacks in the Sui community as well, Nexa founder, former Martian Wallet and Polynomial member (X handle: @defi_or_defuck), user allfather.sui, also took the opportunity to complain. He said he had heard or seen similar comments in the Sui ecosystem such as "Sui is not for that" or "if you want this, go to Solana and BSC," and believes that such remarks driving away developers and users only stifle builders' motivation.

These complaints quickly drew harsh criticism from some die-hard fans. User @0xairtx expressed strong dissatisfaction in an extreme way, saying that the two complainers should be ashamed of their comments because they only want to issue tokens rather than develop products, while Sui's stack is designed to make product development easier. This person believes Sui is not a degen chain, but a "chain to reconstruct the internet," so it should not support these "meaningless" applications.

Perhaps there really is a preference for certain types of applications. Rohan Handa, a member of the Mysten Labs (Sui's development company) Deals Team, replied under this die-hard fan's comment, saying, "They're actually very smart, they know everything," implying that those complaining about the Sui community atmosphere know exactly why they are not welcomed.

At this point, another Sui community member sarcastically commented, "If they know everything, why don't they use Sui to develop the next Telegram or GMail that no one will use, instead of developing a user-facing DApp?" The comment directly pointed out that Sui has no idea where its real public chain users come from, arrogantly believing that such "politically correct" applications will actually be used. This statement led to Rohan Handa's classic reply:

I wonder when was the last time Netflix accused AWS of not helping them grow.

This arrogant attitude triggered a lot of dissatisfaction among community members, and the tweet quickly surpassed 20,000 views, with the comment section filled with criticism. Everyone seemed to think that Sui comparing itself to AWS was an overestimation. In the niche Web3 industry, public chain foundations are supposed to support ecosystem projects so that they can succeed together. User @0xiiptolemy bluntly stated, "Sui paid 9% of WAL's total supply to Binance to get the token listed on the exchange. If Sui is so omnipotent, why spend millions of dollars to get Binance's help?" allfather.sui also mimicked Rohan Handa's tone, saying, "AWS employees don't tell Netflix users to use Google Cloud-based products if they want to use Netflix. You can't say you want to build the next internet while being picky about the needs of the next internet."

Realizing that team members had said things they shouldn't have, Sui co-founder and CEO Evan Cheng stepped in to apologize to everyone who felt slighted and said that regardless of any disagreements, negative communication between any member of Mysten Labs, Sui, and Walrus and the community is not allowed. Afterwards, Evan Cheng said he would provide concrete plans to support builders in Sui and Walrus to resolve the issues.

Evan Cheng's quick PR response received a lot of support in the comments. Some community members said that there is still a clear gap between the foundation, builders, ambassadors, and the community, but if this gap can be bridged and communication becomes smoother, they believe the Sui ecosystem will become more attractive.

Should Foundations Intervene in Development Direction?

Sui ambassador @MindfrogCrypto publicly stated on X that Sui ecosystem builders often complain about low liquidity and few retail users, and that foundation funding is mostly directed toward "serious" projects (such as infrastructure and DeFi), while meme/game projects feel "marginalized." In addition, there are often "purity debates" in the Sui community, such as whether to welcome BSC-style low-barrier projects.

Similar discussions exist in any public chain ecosystem. Developers or project teams do not want the foundation to show obvious bias and hope it can support the development of all types of projects; from the foundation's perspective, there is concern that if the trend shifts too much toward speculation, it could create negative stereotypes and affect long-term development. From this perspective, Sui's support for so-called "serious" projects is justifiable.

By analogy with governments and enterprises, governments naturally support the development of real economy and high-tech industries more, because these industries bring jobs, incremental markets, and drive technological progress. But this does not mean suppressing street barbecue stalls; instead, all types of industries should have space to survive and develop to promote urban inclusiveness. For Sui, the foundation should provide unbiased basic support for entrepreneurial directions and trends that arise spontaneously from the community, and allocate more resources to projects with higher technical or scale barriers.

Solana's comeback from the lows of 2022 could not have happened without the support of its foundation. The Solana Foundation did not favor "serious" projects, and even when meme tokens were dominating, it did not overwhelmingly support memes, but also promoted the development of other types of projects. Being unbiased may be the most correct thing the Solana Foundation has done. In this cycle, the Ethereum ecosystem's prominent hotspots, such as restaking, are not friendly to retail investors, which has indeed caused it to lag behind Solana in recent years.

For Sui, it is fine to continue supporting "serious" projects, but after reaping returns in token price due to the high quality of ecosystem projects, Sui should not fall into path dependence. Instead, it should now diversify the types of ecosystem projects and increase inclusiveness, which can also bring more ordinary users and liquidity, solving long-standing issues.

The owner of a barbecue stall will not be troubled by the lack of an industrial park, but will be worried about the lack of planned stall locations. As one user commented under Rohan Handa's post: "Being responsible and being supportive are two different things. You misunderstood what your boss meant."