A GUI is of critical importance for the next level of adoption.
I disagree. What incentive does anyone outside of our community have to run a full node with a GUI? How many Bitcoin users do you think still use QT?
The "next level" of adoption comes from third-party integrations and services that actually bring utility to the currency. A bundled GUI doesn't deliver any compelling new use cases, and won't result in
any new adoption outside of Bitcointalk users and their close relatives.