ChainCatcher reported that in response to the statement "Ethereum's self-update requires generational/talent replacement, and the next generation needs to be rooted in Ethereum's values (such as crypto-punk)," Vitalik Buterin replied on Warpcast: "I actually think the growth of the application layer is precisely when good social philosophy is most needed. For example: Suppose C++ was developed by an authoritarian racist fascist. Would it be a worse language? Probably not. C++ is generic and doesn't leave much room for bad social philosophy to destroy it (or for good social philosophy to improve it). Ethereum Layer-1 is not entirely the same: People who don't believe in decentralization won't add light clients, FOCIL, or (good forms of) account abstraction; those who don't mind energy waste won't spend five years migrating to PoS. But in any case, the opcodes of EVM might be roughly the same. So Ethereum might be 50% generic. Applications are about 80% specific. What kind of application you build largely depends on your ideas about what Ethereum applications (and Ethereum as a whole) will do for the world. Therefore, having good ideas on this topic becomes crucial."
Additionally, Vitalik listed some applications, considering good ones like Railgun, Farcaster, Polymarket, Signal, and bad ones like Pump.fun, Terra/Luna, FTX. He believes that the differences in application functionality stem from developers holding different beliefs about their goals.
