Sonic Labs (previously Fantom) co-founder Andre Cronje believes that builders ought to keep away from utilizing Layer 2 (L2) software strings. Appchains are custom-made L2 blockchains designed to satisfy the precise wants of an software.
In X's publish, Cronje listed a number of drawbacks that hinder the expansion of appchains. These disadvantages embrace excessive infrastructure prices, fragmented liquidity, and a scarcity of developer help.
Cronje famous that appchains lack the infrastructure to deploy stablecoins, oracles, and institutional escrow. Extra importantly, Cronje stated infrastructure prices are grossly understated.
In keeping with him, the prices of guardianship, exchanges, oracles, bridges, and so on. are fairly excessive. Cronje's workforce has already spent $14 million on such bills this yr, a lot of which incorporates recurring prices.
Nonetheless, Hilmar Orth, founding father of the Gelato Community, has a distinct opinion. In keeping with Orth, builders can simply entry infrastructure via rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) suppliers. Orth stated RaaS suppliers and framework groups present a variety of help to builders, opposite to Cronje's declare.
Cronje additionally argued that appchains result in fragmented liquidity pressured onto susceptible bridges.
Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, famous that the AggLayer (aggregation layer) might doubtlessly resolve the issue by creating an interoperable community of appchains. Polygon AggLayer permits sovereign blockchains to share liquidity.
However, Orth famous that every rollup comes with its personal bridges and market makers. Liquidity is due to this fact prone to accumulate in a small variety of chains with excessive Whole Worth Locked (TVL). Which means the remaining chains will solely take part on this liquidity based mostly on demand.
Orth added that quicker zero-knowledge proofs will additional make the motion of sources inside summaries extra seamless.
Neighborhood and community results
In keeping with Cronje, appchains lack a neighborhood of creators and customers, which in flip “kills community results.” However Boiron stated community results will probably be “alive and effectively” on AggLayer, which aggregates customers and liquidity. He wrote:
“So many frens contributing to AggLayer and everybody will need to assist develop the pie.”
Nonetheless, Orth believes that apps are there to compete with one another for customers and are due to this fact not associates.
