Vitalik Buterin said in a reply to a netizen on X: "The types of applications I want to see are those that (i) work in a sustainable way and (ii) do not sacrifice principles (no permission, decentralization, etc.).
I think DEX is great and I use it every week. I think decentralized stablecoins (such as RAI) are great. I also think Polymarket is good.
I don't think USDC is as good as RAI, but as a practical matter, we have to respect that it is very convenient and a lot of people are using it. This is very useful for me personally when making international donations, which is much more convenient than banks. We are trying to make the global economy and society more open and free, and people in emerging markets using stablecoins to trade freely is a real life use case that happens everywhere.
USDC on Ethereum is also much better than account-to-account transfers within centralized exchanges, which also happens frequently. If we get a lot of people using USDC, it will create a situation where it is easier for people to switch to other more decentralized stablecoins.
The things I "don't" respect are basically those whose appeal comes from some temporary sources and are not sustainable. I have no respect for 2021 I’m not excited about the 2016 yield farming craze because it’s clear that it comes from a token issuance that is fundamentally temporary.
If someone tells me: ‘Put your money here and you can get a nice yield,’ my question is always: ‘Where is the yield coming from?’ Who is on the other side of the transaction and who is paying the yield? If there is a concrete answer to this question and there is good reason to believe that the answer will still be true in 5 years, then I’ll be very excited about it.”