Low-risk defi can be for Ethereum what search was for Google

Feeling quite abandoned by the Ethereum leadership when I read stuff like:

Meanwhile, non-financial and semi-financial applications (eg. Lens, Farcaster, ENS, Polymarket, Seer, privacy protocols) existed, and they were fascinating, but they either got very little usage, or paid far too little in fees (or other forms of economic activity) to sustain a $500 billion economy.

"existed," "were fascinating," etc.

Is the implication that he has moved beyond them now and considers them past experiments?

Yes you are right. It feels they just gave up on Ethereum social.

It's sad frankly as I feel like there are so many people in that ecosystem who feel genuinely excited about the future of Ethereum social. I don't know why Ethereum leadership has to constantly bash everything that they don't seem to understand well. It's frankly the same that has happened to NFTs that is now happening to Ethereum social. One day Ethereum will just be this dead-seeming platform for finance that nobody will understand or care about.

Vitalik's talk at EthCC in 2021 was titled "Things that matter outside of DeFi" https://www.youtube.com/live/oLsb7clrXMQ