Alex Thorn, Galaxy's head of research, just dropped some serious heat on Ethereum's layer-2 (L2) blockchains, calling them “ETH extractive.” In a social media post on August 6, Thorn argued that many L2 networks are getting fat off Ethereum but aren’t sharing the wealth with Ethereum’s layer-1 (L1).

According to Thorn, L2s are hoarding most of the fee revenue, leaving Ethereum L1 with crumbs. Not only that, but most of these L2s are controlled by single companies or foundations, which means very little value trickles back to ETH holders. And guess what? A lot of these L2s aren’t even staking the ETH they rake in from fees.

Thorn’s Beef With L2 Profits

Thorn’s rant got juicier when he pointed out the numbers post-EIP-4844. He noted that L2s have been raking in between $100,000 and $400,000 a day in user fees, while their aggregate costs for blobs and gas are only around $10,000 daily. That’s some nice profit margin, especially when you factor in running the chain. Blobs, by the way, are like digital storage units used by L2s to stash their data on Ethereum.

Thorn compared payments from Coinbase’s Base to OP (Optimism), noting that Base forked out $4.4 million to OP over the past 180 days, while all of Ethereum’s L2s combined only paid $3.05 million to Ethereum L1 for blobs and gas. Thorn went further, saying that Coinbase made a cool $14.9 million in Base fee revenue during Q2, yet Ethereum only saw $443,000 in L1 data costs, and OP pocketed $2.16 million. Thorn wasn’t shy about pointing out that “OP is literally making 4.8x more off Base than Ethereum is.”

How Much Should L2s Give Back to Ethereum?

Thorn wrapped up his post with a bold statement: Ethereum L2s aren’t exactly "ETH aligned." They look more “ETH extractive” to him. This criticism is far from new. It reignites the age-old debate over how much economic value L2s should send back to Ethereum versus how much they should pocket for their operators or upstream collectives.

The cost structure after EIP-4844, which added blobs and lowered L2 data costs, has made this argument even stronger. The new structure gives L2s a good margin, but there is still a disagreement about how to balance user fees, L1 costs, and staking. One thing is clear: Thorn isn't afraid to call out L2s for their role in Ethereum's ecosystem.

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