The criticism of catering to early adopters and whales is a bit weird to me. How is this different than any project that receives funding? What's the ideal solution for this?

Personally, I'm curious to see a project like Mastodon or Peertube fund itself using a token. I don't think those projects will ever get any meaningful use aside a few nerds and outcasts that got booted off of Web2 properties. You'll probably get speculators in it purely for profit, but to me it sounds better than the alternatives.