### Sonic Labs CTO Andre Cronje: Challenges and Thoughts on L2 Application Chain

Hello everyone! Today we are going to talk about a hot topic in the blockchain world - L2 application chain. Andre Cronje, CTO of Sonic Labs, published a thought-provoking article on October 13, pointing out a series of challenges faced by L2 application chain in the process of development and use. Let's take a look!

First, Cronje mentioned that L2 application chain almost lacks infrastructure support when deployed, such as stablecoins, oracles, and institutional custody. The lack of these infrastructures makes developers face many difficulties when building applications. In addition, without the help of foundations or laboratories, developers can only fight alone, which undoubtedly increases the complexity and risk of the project.

Secondly, the centralized architecture of L2 application chains also makes them vulnerable to attacks. The decentralized liquidity and the mechanism of forcing to pass through the cross-chain bridge make the user experience poor. To make matters worse, the L2 application chain lacks a user and developer community, which forces developers to spend a lot of time dealing with infrastructure issues instead of focusing on applications and user experience.

Cronje also pointed out that L2 application chains eliminate network effects and have a long transaction confirmation time, and some suppliers are even unwilling to cooperate with them. The model of independent development lacks the support of the cooperative team, making it more difficult to advance the project.

Finally, Cronje mentioned that application chains seriously underestimate the costs of infrastructure and compliance. In 2024 alone, these costs have reached 14 million US dollars, a large part of which is recurring costs. These costs include browsers, hosting, trading platforms, oracles, bridges, toolkits, IDEs, on/off ramps, native issuance and integration, supervision and compliance, etc.

In general, L2 application chains face many challenges at the current stage, but this does not mean that they have no future. The birth and development of every new technology requires time and patience, and L2 application chains are no exception. For developers and users, understanding these challenges and actively looking for solutions is an important step in promoting the blockchain industry.

Friends, what do you think of L2 application chains? Welcome to share your views and insights in the comment area!😊

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I hope this newsletter can provide you with some valuable information, and I also look forward to everyone's lively discussion in the comment section!