Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
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
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johnsterlaccii
@sterlacci
the problem with “philosophically” built apps is that they only appeal to people with the same values. mainstream users don’t share cypherpunk values, and app builders having to educate potential users is a losing strategy.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
You don't need to educate users (at the very least, you definitely don't put the education burden upfront). You build apps that do the right thing behind the scenes by default. Signal is a reasonably good example of this (though it has significant flaws of its own). Farcaster is also a good example of this.
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johnsterlaccii
@sterlacci
the “right thing” for mainstream users is fast, free, and frictionless which are all centralizing forces behind the scenes
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aerique
@aerique.eth
I would be interested in hearing what you think Signal's significant flaws are.
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