The co-founder of Scroll, Ye Zhang, has expressed strong opposition to the idea of imposing fees on Ethereum rollups, stating that such a move would damage long-term growth for the sake of short-term profits.
Zhang, who is at the helm of the layer-2 smart contract platform Scroll, criticized the proposal to levy charges on Ethereum rollups, describing it as “one of the most detrimental ideas for Ethereum’s future.”
In a series of messages on X, he contended that this method would compromise “long-term scalability and ecosystem growth for immediate revenue,” noting that evaluating the value of ETH based on Ethereum’s revenue “misses the point.”
Zhang emphasized that Ethereum’s true strength lies in its role as “the central asset across countless rollup ecosystems,” rather than focusing on fee collection. According to data from DefiLlama indicates that following the EIP-4488 upgrade, which enhanced layer-2 scalability, Ethereum’s transaction fees dropped significantly from daily figures in the tens of millions to approximately $570,000 by late March.
He pointed out that while Solana’s network is “vertically integrated” with its SOL token serving as its principal asset, ETH already reigns as the leading asset on several platforms, including Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, and Scroll — even in cases where it isn’t the native gas token, such as StarkNet.
The Scroll co-founder cautioned that implementing fees on rollups could backfire, possibly steering them towards alternative data availability solutions, which could undermine Ethereum’s standing within the ecosystem. He warned that if Ethereum adopts a “greedy” approach and begins taxing layer-2s, it risks losing “relevance while still struggling to scale.”
Instead of extracting value from rollups, Zhang proposed that Ethereum should concentrate on scaling and accelerate its upgrade process. He isn’t the only one voicing concerns about the pace of developments within the Ethereum community. As previously reported, former Solidity expert from the Ethereum Foundation, Harikrishnan Mulackal, noted that internal confusion may have led to persistent disagreements, with key updates experiencing significant delays in the development community.