Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes the app builders on the network need a good social philosophy that will reflect in Ethereum-based decentralized applications. Buterin said this while responding to discussions about the need to reembrace cypherpunk values on the network.
According to Buterin, the call for good social philosophy on Ethereum layer-1 might not be necessary because the network is mostly general purpose. Instead, he believes that good social philosophy should happen more on the application layer, and builders should develop apps that align with cypherpunk ethos.
In his view, it does not matter much how many social goods are integrated into the operating codes for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) because the base layer mostly serves a general purpose. However, the applications are 80% special purpose and ought to reflect good social philosophy.
He said:
“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.”
Buterin cites positive and negative examples of apps
Buterin went on to list examples of what he considers to be good and bad social philosophy. He considers Railgun, Farcaster, Signal, and Polymarket as good, while FTX, Terra/Luna, and Pump.fun are bad.
For him, what matters is what the developers of these apps seek to accomplish, and builders can always encode such values into their apps by default if they believe in the idea.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum co-founder compared the EVM to the C++ programming language, noting that the values of those who created the language have minimal impact on its usefulness because it is mostly general purpose.
Buterin wrote:
“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).”
However, he acknowledged that Ethereum is not in the same position and added that the network already has several cypherpunk values encoded, such as decentralization, light clients, transition to Proof of Stake, etc.
Ethereum holders and stakeholders appear divided on priority
Discussions over cypherpunk values on Ethereum are a result of a post by the Ethereum official account on the topic. The post focused on how the Ethereum network represents this ethos and highlighted apps on the network that reflect them.
However, reactions to the post have been negative, with many users currently frustrated by the network performance. One user, Owocki, on X, noted that Ethereum should be focused on scaling L1 to better support the application layer instead, and the network can have more people embrace cypherpunk if it creates a winning product.
This opinion appears to align with that of many ETH holders. According to Santiment, analysis of social media sentiments shows many users are skeptical about Ethereum’s ability to stage a comeback and how it has significantly underperformed BTC.
Despite the recent gains in the crypto market, ETH remains one of the worst performers with the token trading at $1,600 and down 52% year-to-date. Almost all the other major altcoins have seen a better performance in the last 24 hours.
However, there might be some hope for ETH. Crypto analyst Ali Martinez said that the token has already reclaimed a key support level at $1,574 and could rise up to $1,810 before seeing its next major resistance.
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