Andre Cronje, co-founder of Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom), believes that developers should avoid using Layer 2 (L2) app chains. Appchains are custom L2 blockchains designed to meet the specific needs of an application.
In an X-post, Cronje listed several disadvantages that hinder the growth of app chains. These disadvantages include the high cost of infrastructure, fragmented liquidity, and lack of developer support.
Cronje noted that appchains lack infrastructure for deploying stablecoins, oracles, and institutional custody. More importantly, Cronje said the cost of infrastructure is grossly underestimated.
According to him, the costs of custody, exchanges, oracles, bridges, etc. are quite high. Cronje’s team has already spent $14 million on such expenses this year, much of which includes recurring costs.
However, Hilmar Orth, the founder of Gelato Network, has a different opinion. According to Orth, developers can easily access the infrastructure through rollup-as-a-service providers (RaaS). Orth said that RaaS providers and framework teams provide a lot of support to developers, contrary to Cronje’s claims.
Cronje also claimed that app chains lead to fragmented liquidity that is forced onto vulnerable bridges.
Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, noted that the AggLayer (aggregation layer) could potentially solve the problem by creating an interoperable network of app chains. Polygon’s AggLayer enables sovereign blockchains to share liquidity.
On the other hand, Orth noted that each update has its own bridges and market makers. Therefore, liquidity is likely to accumulate in a small number of chains with high total value (TVL). This means that the remaining chains will only use that liquidity based on demand.
Orth added that faster zero-knowledge (zk) proofs will further make moving money across rollups seamless.
Community and network effects
According to Cronje, app chains lack a community of builders and users, which in turn “kills network effects.” However, Boiron stated that network effects would be “alive and well” on the AggLayer, which merges users and liquidity. He wrote:
“There are so many people contributing to the AggLayer and they all want to help grow the pie.”
However, Orth believes that apps exist to compete with each other for users and are therefore not friends.