I think that we share the goals of communicating Namada to potential users, making it easy to enter the community, ensuring that validators can cover their operational costs, and creating a sustainable system that supports Namada (and later, perhaps, integration with Anoma) in the long term. Am I right (do we share all those goals)?
I also agree that several recent launches, such as the ones you mention, have pursued what I will call a “low-float, high FDV” strategy, where only a small portion of supply is unlocked at network start. Honestly, I find this trend concerning. If we understand the price signal as simply the clearing point between supply and demand for an asset, the value of that signal to the market as a whole depends on the supply and demand sides having freedom to express their preferences (e.g. sell if they want to sell, and buy if they want to buy). Vesting/lockups prevent one side of that market (the supply side) from expressing their preferences (selling, if they want to sell), and thus make the signal quality potentially much worse. This may provide some temporary benefit in “market cap ranking” or such metrics for an individual project, but it makes the overall market quality worse because the price signals carry less information.
In any case, the vesting term will eventually expire, and the supply side will be able to sell if they want to. Personally, I would be hesitant to hold an asset or participate in a network where many holders of that asset might want to sell (and exit), but are unable to - it seems risky, since the current signals available to me (e.g. price) might be very distorted, and their values might change substantially in the future. I think this would apply especially to participants such as validators whose income (staking rewards) and costs (hardware operation) are likely denominated in different assets (NAM and USD, respectively) and thus predicting whether or not such an operation would be sustainable is dependent on accurate price signals. It may not be the case, for example, that Namada can support the costs of hundreds of validator operators - but far better for them to learn that now, than set up a whole operational setup on the basis of a distorted price signal and have much trouble in the future when that signal is corrected.