Andre Cronje, co-founder of Sonic Labs (previously Fantom), believes builders ought to keep away from utilizing Layer 2 (L2) app chains. AppChain is a custom-made L2 blockchain designed to satisfy the particular wants of your utility.

Within the X publish, Cronje listed a number of drawbacks that hinder the expansion of app chains. These drawbacks embrace excessive infrastructure prices, fragmented liquidity, and lack of assist for builders.

Cronje identified that app chains lack the infrastructure to implement stablecoins, oracles, and institutional custody. Extra importantly, Cronje mentioned the price of infrastructure is grossly underestimated.

In accordance with him, the prices of storage, change, oracles, bridges, and so on. are fairly excessive. Cronje's crew has already spent $14 million on such bills this 12 months, a lot of it in recurring bills.

However Gelato Community founder Hilmar Ors has a distinct opinion. In accordance with Orth, builders can simply entry infrastructure by means of Rollup as a Service supplier (RaaS). Orth mentioned that opposite to Cronje's claims, RaaS suppliers and framework groups present quite a lot of assist to builders.

Cronje additionally argued that app chains result in liquidity fragmentation and are compelled onto weak bridges.

Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron mentioned AggLayer (aggregation layer) might resolve the issue by creating an interoperable community of app chains. Polygon’s AggLayer allows sovereign blockchains to share liquidity.

In the meantime, Orth identified that every rollup comes with its personal bridge and market maker. Subsequently, liquidity is more likely to accumulate in a small variety of chains with excessive whole worth lock (TVL). This implies the remainder of the chain can be linked to that liquidity primarily based on demand.

Orth added that the acceleration of zero-knowledge (zk) proofs will make the motion of funds between rollups much more seamless.

Neighborhood and community results

Cronje mentioned app chains lack a neighborhood of builders and customers, which “kills the community impact.” However Boiron mentioned community results are “alive and alive” at AggLayer, which aggregates customers and liquidity. He wrote:

“So many individuals are contributing to AggLayer, and all of us need to assist develop the pie.”

However Orth believes apps exist to compete for customers and are subsequently not mates.

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