Sonic Labs founder argues L2s as appchains are usually not logical for builders

Sonic Labs (previously Fantom) cofounder Andre Cronje believes that builders ought to keep away from utilizing layer 2 (L2) app chains. Appchains are custom-made L2 blockchains designed to fulfill an software’s particular wants.

In an X put up, Cronje listed a number of disadvantages hindering the expansion of appchains. These drawbacks embody the excessive value of infrastructure, fragmented liquidity, and lack of assist for builders.

Cronje famous that appchains lack infrastructure for deploying stablecoins, oracles, and institutional custody. Extra importantly, Cronje mentioned that the price of infrastructure is grossly underestimated.

In response to him, the prices of custody, exchanges, oracles, bridges, and so on. are fairly excessive. Cronje’s staff has already spent $14 million on such bills this 12 months, a big a part of which incorporates recurring prices.

Nonetheless, Hilmar Orth, the founding father of Gelato Community, has a distinct opinion. In response to Orth, builders can simply entry infrastructure by rollup-as-a-service suppliers (RaaS). Orth mentioned that RaaS suppliers and framework groups present a lot assist to builders, opposite to Cronje’s claims.

Cronje additionally claimed that appchains result in fragmented liquidity pressured onto weak bridges.

Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, famous that the AggLayer (aggregation layer) might probably resolve the difficulty by creating an interoperable community of appchains. Polygon’s AggLayer permits sovereign blockchains to share liquidity.

Then again, Orth famous that every rollup comes with its personal bridges and market makers. Due to this fact, liquidity is prone to accumulate in a small variety of chains with excessive complete worth locked (TVL). This implies the remaining chains will simply plug into that liquidity primarily based on demand.

Orth added that sooner zero-knowledge (zk) proofs will additional make shifting funds throughout rollups extra seamless.

Neighborhood and community results

In response to Cronje, appchains lack a group of builders and customers, which in flip “kills community results.” Boiron, nonetheless, acknowledged that community results can be “alive and effectively” on the AggLayer, which aggregates customers and liquidity. He wrote:

“So many frens contributing to the AggLayer and all are going to need to assist develop the pie.”

Orth, nonetheless, believes that apps are there to compete with one another for customers and are, due to this fact, not pals.

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