📰 Solana co-founder Toly is at it again with Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder, and this time they’re arguing over the same old point: don’t just look at the headline fee.

Toly’s point is very straightforward: Arbitrum currently has a wider bid-ask spread and higher fees; if you only calculate the 10% cut taken from fees, the cost is already higher than the sandwich trading fee rate, and once you factor in the worse spread, he estimates the overall cost could be about 10 times higher.

💡 Steven’s take isn’t without merit either. He stresses that both Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain are designed to prevent front-running and harmful MEV. A lot of people like to bring up “low fees,” but retail users may end up being slowly drained by hidden costs like front-running and sandwich attacks.

Honestly, the core of this debate isn’t who’s louder, but what people care about more: the “visible fee” or the total amount spent on the trade. On the single-sequencer model, Toly flat-out says it can never beat permissionless market competition.

🤔 When looking at chains, you really can’t focus on just one number. Would you trust something that’s “cheap but may have hidden losses,” or “a bit more expensive but has a more stable mechanism”?

#Solana #Arbitrum #MEV #on-chain trading