Eth-er Fees? Toxic Idea Alert! 🚨

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Right then, gather ’round, because Ye Zhang, the brains (or at least, a brain) behind Scroll, has got something to say about these bright sparks suggesting Ethereum should start charging fees on its rollups. Apparently, it’s a bit like trying to milk a cow dry and then wondering why it keels over. 🐄 Not a good look.

Ye Zhang, a Co-Founder of the layer-2 smart contract platform Scroll, who clearly isn’t afraid to speak his mind (or, more accurately, type it into a series of posts), has called the idea of charging fees on Ethereum rollups “one of the most toxic ideas for Ethereum’s future.” Sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? Like a bad curry that keeps on giving.

In what one can only describe as a mild Twitter-storm ⛈️ (or is it X-storm these days? Honestly, who can keep up?), Zhang argued that this is sacrificing “long-term scalability and ecosystem growth for short-term revenue.” Which, as any Discworld economist will tell you, is about as sensible as using gold to pave the streets. And measuring ETH‘s (ETH) value by Ethereum’s revenue apparently “misses the point.” Well, quite. It’s like judging a wizard by the size of his hat, rather than, y’know, the actual magic.

1/6 Tariffing L2s is one of the most toxic ideas for Ethereum’s future. It trades long-term scalability and ecosystem growth for short-term revenue — a strategy fit for centralized corps, not credibly neutral platforms.

— Ye Zhang 📜 (@yezhang1998) April 2, 2025

According to Zhang, Ethereum’s real strength lies in being “the hub asset across thousands of rollup ecosystems,” not in acting like a greedy landlord squeezing rent out of everyone. 💰 Data from DefiLlama (sounds like a particularly grumpy llama, doesn’t it?) shows that after the EIP-4488 upgrade, which boosted layer-2 scalability, Ethereum’s fees dropped from “tens of millions per day” to a slightly more reasonable “$570,000 by late March.” Still enough to buy a few rather nice hats, mind you.

Zhang also pointed out that while Solana’s network is all “vertically integrated” (whatever that means – probably something to do with wearing stripes), with its Solana (SOL) token as its core asset, ETH is “already the dominant asset on Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, Scroll – and even where it’s not the gas token (like StarkNet).” So there.

The Scroll co-founder also gave a stern warning, like a particularly grumpy gnome lecturing you on the dangers of excessive fertiliser use, that charging fees on rollups could backfire spectacularly. It might, he suggests, push them towards “alternative data availability solutions”. Which sounds suspiciously like finding somewhere else to live. That, in turn, could weaken Ethereum’s position in the ecosystem. Zhang added that if Ethereum gets “greedy” and starts taxing layer-2s, the network would lose “relevance while still failing to scale.” Ouch. Sounds like a self-inflicted wound to me. 🤕

Instead of extracting value from rollups (because apparently, there’s more to life than hoarding gold), Zhang suggested Ethereum should focus on scaling and ship upgrades faster. And Zhang isn’t the only one who seems to have concerns about Ethereum’s pace. As crypto.news reported earlier, former Ethereum Foundation Solidity expert Harikrishnan Mulackal suggested that internal confusion may have led to frequent disagreements, with key updates reportedly facing repeated delays in the Ethereum development community. Sounds about as organised as a goblin tea party. ☕

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2025-04-02 14:01