Andre Cronje, founding father of Sonic Labs and referred to as “deFi Godfather”, has criticized Ethereum L2 options for his or her dealing with of earnings and potential misalignment with Ethereum’s decentralized rules.
Be L2. Have centralized sequencer. Generate $120m in charges. Pay Ethereum $10m of that quantity for DA & safety. Dump $110m for revenue. Be “Ethereum aligned”.
I don’t perceive how ethereans persuade themselves with these psychological gymnastics.
L2s are why Ethereum is… pic.twitter.com/edOlPOsdah
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) February 8, 2025
“I don’t perceive how ethereans persuade themselves with these psychological gymnastics. L2s are why Ethereum is inflationary once more.” Cronje posted on X
Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum L2, responded to the criticism by way of its technique lead, Kabir.
“Base is and can proceed rising Ethereum. We’re investing all of our earnings and sources into doing this. Base and Coinbase maintain over 100,000 ETH—greater than $300 million—making it the most important ETH holding of any public firm at the moment,” Kabir wrote.
This narrative simply isn’t true — listed below are the information:
Base is and can proceed rising Ethereum. We’re investing all of our earnings and sources into doing this and we now have gone from zero to thousands and thousands of latest folks onchain in 1.5 years.
Base and Coinbase have and proceed to… pic.twitter.com/VR3BAAUhIc
— Kabir | kabir.base.eth (@kabir_base) February 9, 2025
The controversy facilities on two competing visions for Ethereum’s scalability.
Critics argue that L2s generate substantial income whereas returning solely a fraction to Ethereum for information availability and safety.
Proponents of decentralized scalability, together with Cronje, advocate for enhancing Ethereum’s base layer immediately utilizing options like Sonic to scale back dependency on exterior L2 suppliers.
Julio Moreno, head of analysis at CryptoQuant, famous that Ethereum’s provide has now exceeded pre-Merge ranges (September 2022), confirming the community’s return to inflation.
ETH provide is now increased than earlier than the Merge.
9 months in the past we printed an evaluation on why this could be the case.Have a look. https://t.co/Q9Z9WFjZbs
— Julio Moreno (@jjcmoreno) February 7, 2025
To handle the inefficiencies of Ethereum L2 options, Andre Cronje has proposed leveraging Sonic’s know-how to bypass the constraints of centralized fashions.