Original title: "DeFi Godfather Andre Cronje complains that "Layer 2 is useless": it's just a waste of money doing repetitive things"

Original author: James, BlockTempo

Since pioneers such as Arbitrum and Optimism began building Layer 2 networks on Ethereum a few years ago to support faster and cheaper transaction experiences, Layer 2 networks have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. According to L2Beat data, there are 73 operating Layer 2s, 20 Layer 3s, 81 upcoming projects and 12 archived projects.

However, Andre Cronje, director of the Fantom Foundation and the chief technology officer of Sonic Labs, who are known as the father of DeFi, tweeted today and pointed their guns at L2, saying that L2 as an application chain is illogical for developers, and listed several reasons:

· There is almost no infrastructure for deployment (stablecoins, oracles, institutional custody, etc.)

· No foundation or laboratory to provide assistance

· Centralized architecture is vulnerable

· Dispersed liquidity and forced to pass through cross-chain bridges

· No user and developer community

· Spend time dealing with the above problems instead of focusing on applications and users

· Eliminate network effects

· Transaction confirmation time is still long (some suppliers are unwilling to cooperate)

· Independent development (no cooperative team)

Andre Cronje It also stated that the application chain has seriously underestimated the cost of infrastructure and compliance (including browsers, hosts, trading platforms, oracles, bridges, toolkits, integrated development environments, deposits and withdrawals, native issuance and integration, supervision, and compliance). In 2024 alone, the application chain has spent $14 million in expenses, a large part of which is recurring costs.

In response to Andre Cronje's statement, developers talked a lot, and some developers agreed, saying "100% agree that it is meaningless to build products on the application chain without the support and help of the foundation", "Considering such a large expense, I am curious why there are more L2s to be launched, and a large number of transactions are required to make money."

However, some developers disagree. One developer said that although the available infrastructure of L2 is limited, the stronger composability between L2 (and even L1) completely eliminates the need for local stablecoins, oracles, and institutional custody. Few people understand the framework shift.

The developer also disagreed with many of Andre Cronje's arguments, emphasizing that L2 application chains are of course decentralized and secure. He admitted that the infrastructure costs of application chains may be higher than those of pure applications, but he firmly believed that as competition for service demand intensifies, the costs of many infrastructures will tend to zero.

Andre Cronje pushes Sonic

In Andre Cronje's view, Layer1 should probably focus on using technology to enhance its scalability rather than constantly creating problems for Layer2. He has recently been fully leading the design and development of the Layer 1 blockchain Sonic (formerly Fantom) network. The Fantom Foundation first disclosed in October last year that it would launch Sonic to improve scalability and performance.

In early September this year, the Sonic testnet was officially launched. Andre Cronje then announced on September 25 that the Sonic mainnet will be officially launched in December this year, inviting developers to build applications on its ecosystem. He also said that Sonic has introduced a credit scoring mechanism and has the opportunity to become the first public chain to unlock the $11.3 trillion market (the size of the global unsecured loan market).

Andre Cronje had vigorously promoted the performance of his own Sonic network at the time, including up to 90% of transaction fees will be returned to developers, the number of transactions per second (TPS) exceeded 10,000, the transaction finality (TTF) was about 1 second, and native stablecoins were supported. In terms of bridging with Ethereum, he is committed to developing Sonic Gateway's new native bridging technology to greatly improve the security and convenience of transferring assets from other chains.

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