Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said during a discussion on decentralized social media platform Warpcast that social philosophy plays a crucial role in the development of decentralized applications.
As Ethereum's application layer continues to grow, he argued that strong ideological foundations and a genuine belief in decentralization are more necessary than ever.
“I actually think that the growth of the application layer is exactly when a good social philosophy is needed the most,” Buterin said, noting the impact of developers’ values on the types of applications that are created.
Drawing an analogy, Buterin likened Ethereum to general-purpose programming languages like C++, noting that while the technical infrastructure is largely unaffected by ideology, the application layer is more susceptible to the beliefs of its creators, adding: “Imagine C++ being made by a totalitarian. Would it be a worse language? Probably not… But Ethereum is maybe 50% general-purpose. The applications are ~80% special-purpose.”
Buterin noted that developers who are not committed to decentralization may miss key features like light clients, account abstraction, or the move to proof-of-stake, a journey Ethereum has undertaken to address energy concerns. He noted that developing applications on Ethereum is significantly influenced by developers’ vision of how blockchain technology should play a role in the world.
He cited several projects that align with these principles as positive examples, including privacy protocol Railgun (RAIL), social network Farcaster, prediction market Polymarket, and secure messaging platform Signal. In contrast, he criticized practices such as memecoin platform Pump.fun, failed algorithmic stablecoin project Terra/Luna, and collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, describing them as examples of weak philosophical foundations that lead to harmful outcomes.
Railgun is an altcoin that is not listed on many centralized cryptocurrency exchanges with a market cap of $45 million.
*This is not investment advice.
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