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 satisfy an utility’s particular wants.
In an X put up, Cronje listed a number of disadvantages hindering the expansion of appchains. These drawbacks embrace the excessive price 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 keeping with him, the prices of custody, exchanges, oracles, bridges, and many others. are fairly excessive. Cronje’s staff has already spent $14 million on such bills this yr, a big a part of which incorporates recurring prices.
Nevertheless, Hilmar Orth, the founding father of Gelato Community, has a distinct opinion. In keeping with Orth, builders can simply entry infrastructure by means of 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 compelled onto susceptible bridges.
Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, famous that the AggLayer (aggregation layer) may doubtlessly resolve the difficulty by creating an interoperable community of appchains. Polygon’s AggLayer allows sovereign blockchains to share liquidity.
However, Orth famous that every rollup comes with its personal bridges and market makers. Subsequently, 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 quicker zero-knowledge (zk) proofs will additional make shifting funds throughout rollups extra seamless.
Group and community results
In keeping with Cronje, appchains lack a group of builders and customers, which in flip “kills community results.” Boiron, nevertheless, acknowledged that community results could be “alive and properly” 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, nevertheless, believes that apps are there to compete with one another for customers and are, subsequently, not pals.
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