# Philosophy of the app layer

Source: https://warpcast.com/vitalik.eth/0x62628420
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Philosophy-of-the-app-layer?index=0x68010ab9a1c72725d1ff212ede771fcac200cc7dfc51729520db51ca9d6fe35b66b8050e
Submitted by macbudkowski.eth on 2025-04-17 UTC, 3 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

The author argues that the growth of the app layer makes good social philosophy especially important, because apps are largely special-purpose and their design depends on what people think Ethereum and its apps are for. The argument contrasts C++, a general-purpose language that would likely be no worse if built by someone with bad social views, with Ethereum L1, which is perhaps 50% general-purpose: a person who doesn't believe in decentralization would not add light clients, FOCIL, or account abstraction, though the EVM opcodes might be much the same. Apps are described as roughly 80% special purpose, so having good ideas about their purpose becomes crucially important.

## Article

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