Galaxy head of research Alex Thorn criticized the business model of many Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 (L2) blockchains as “ETH extractive.”

In an Aug. 6 social media post, Thorn argued that L2 networks retain most of the fee revenue while contributing relatively little back to the Ethereum L1. 

Thorn added that most L2s are controlled by single companies or foundations, which means “very little value accrues to ETH holders,” and “most L2s don’t even stake back the ETH they collect in fees.” 

Post EIP-4844

Pointing to post-EIP-4844 dynamics, Thorn noted that aggregate L2 blob confirmation costs and L1 gas spend have hovered around $10,000 per day, while L2s earn from $100,000 to $400,000 daily in user fees.

As a result, L2 earnings leave “a nice margin even including running the chain.” Blobs are dedicated spaces offering data storage used by layer-2 blockchains built on top of Ethereum.

He also contrasted payments from Base to the Optimism Collective, since Base uses the OP Stack, versus payments from L2s to Ethereum. Over the last 180 days, Base paid $4.4 million to OP, while all L2s combined paid $3.05 million to Ethereum L1 for blobs and gas.

Thorn further claimed Coinbase made $14.9 million in Base fee revenue in Q2, with $443,000 in L1 data costs and $2.16 million paid to OP, saying “OP is literally making 4.8x more off Base than Ethereum is.” 

The critique culminated in a broader alignment question, to which Thorn responded:

“…They aren’t really ‘eth aligned…’ they look pretty ‘Eth extractive’ to me.”

Long-running debate

Base graduated to Stage 1 in April on data aggregator L2Beat, an intermediate decentralization tier envisioned by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. 

Stage 1 indicates improved fault-proofs and governance safeguards, while Stage 2 is defined by an L2 having no group of actors that can post a state root other than the output of the code, even unanimously.

The L2 powered by Coinbase was among other chains that recently updated their security measures to prevent ways to block messages to the mainnet other than compromising at least 75% of the network’s security council. 

Thorn’s argument revives a long-running debate over how much economic value L2s should return to Ethereum versus to their operators or upstream collectives. 

The post-4844 cost structure lowered L2 data costs by introducing blobs, but the balance between user fees retained by L2s and L1 spend and staking remains contested.

Mentioned in this article

Billionaire Mike Novogratz says world leaders should act to take down Lazarus, the notorious North Korean hacker group responsible for the recent Bybit hack, which is believed to be the biggest heist in human history.

Novogratz, the CEO of crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital, says that Bybit did a world-class job of handling the hack, which ultimately resulted in $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum (ETH) being stolen from the exchange’s cold wallet.

Following the hack, some prominent figures in the industry have proposed the idea of rolling back the Ethereum network.

Blockchain rollbacks reverse transactions that have already been confirmed to restore the chain to a specified earlier state and are usually performed after a network undergoes a major security breach. In the case of ETH, a rollback will lead to a hard fork similar to what happened nine years ago during the Ethereum DAO hack when thieves drained 3.6 million Ether.

Novogratz strongly rejects the idea.

“This is a false narrative. Lazarus has been at it for years. They have stolen BTC, ETH and plenty of other cryptos.

There will be and should be no ETH fork. Bybit unfortunately will take a hit until their funds are recovered if our governments ever press NK (North Korea). The community will freeze the accounts and we move on.

The 2015 fork was at a very, very different time for the ecosystem. It was still a baby taking its first steps and steadying it made a ton of sense. Not true now.”

The Galaxy executive is also calling on world leaders to deal with the threat posed by the North Korean hacker group.

“It’s time world leaders do something about Lazarus.”

At time of writing, ETH is trading at $2,728.

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