I actually think the growth of app layer is exactly the time that good social philosophy is needed *most*.

Analogy: imagine that C++ had been made by a totalitarian racist fascist. Would it be a worse language? Probably not. C++ is general purpose, there isn't much surface for bad social philosophy to wreck it (or good social philosophy to improve it).

Ethereum L1 is not quite in that position: someone who doesn't believe in decentralization would not add light clients, or FOCIL, or (good forms of) account abstraction; someone who doesn't mind energy waste would not spend half a decade moving to PoS... But the EVM opcodes might have been roughly the same either way. So Ethereum is perhaps 50% general-purpose.

Apps are ~80% special purpose. What apps you build depends heavily on what ideas you have of what ethereum apps (and ethereum as a whole) are there to do for the world. And so having good ideas on this topic out there becomes crucially important.

@owocki absolutely right, that's why i shouted out the dapps at the end. i am in total opposition to infra obsession and think we don't escape the malaise until we find out way back to dapp ecosystem thinking.

@post_polar_ fair take

i will concede that generational/talent turnover is needed for ethereum to renew itself.

and that next generation needs to be rooted into ethereums values (eg cypherpunk).

but omigosh, we are so used to what we know (protocols, infrastructure, supply side

Kev.Ξth is in Brooklyn

I actually think the growth of app layer is exactly the time that good social philosophy is needed *most*.

Analogy: imagine that C++ had been made by a totalitarian racist fascist. Would it be a worse language? Probably not. C++ is general purpose, there isn't much surface for bad social philosophy to wreck it (or good social philosophy to improve it).

Ethereum L1 is not quite in that position: someone who doesn't believe in decentralization would not add light clients, or FOCIL, or (good forms of) account abstraction; someone who doesn't mind energy waste would not spend half a decade moving to PoS... But the EVM opcodes might have been roughly the same either way. So Ethereum is perhaps 50% general-purpose.

Apps are ~80% special purpose. What apps you build depends heavily on what ideas you have of what ethereum apps (and ethereum as a whole) are there to do for the world. And so having good ideas on this topic out there becomes crucially important.

https://x.com/owocki/status/1911160442728419681

The 'invisible hand' eschews judgements such as a "good social framework", and the "good intentions" or lack thereof of developers in a given app (or political system etc.) in the long-run likely has little bearing on the outcome (bubbles, fraud etc. short-term harmful, but in the long-run may help fortify systems)