This in itself wouldn't even be such a problem, but for the past decade, everyone within the ecosystem was banking on this phenomenon. In the early days of the Foundation, the early founders and stakeholders did it internally, vying for power and influence. Then the conference attendees realised the key to success is Vitalik and everyone was constantly blockading him. Eventually this turned into a small cabal of high profile Ethereum thought leaders, the same 5-10 people having investments and advisorships in everything. At this point, to become successful, you just need to get the correct 5-10 people around Vitalik - or even him - to commit (point in case: Farcaster).

The issue at this point isn't even Vitalik, rather that we now do have a "ruling elite" of Ethereum. New projects do not do public offerings anymore, they reach out to the same 5-10 people for initial investment, or advisorship roles. Everyone realised that if you can get Bankless to invest, they'll sing odes on their podcast. If you can get researchers as advisors, you both solve hard problems, but also reduce perceived friction with Ethereum mainnet. The key to the gray-zone is that 5 people to not revolt. You find the same exact people behind all the new projects launching, each project directly playing into each other's hands and if you zoom out enough, you will also find the same VCs on the outside.