Scroll Co-Founder Ye Zhang Slams Proposals to Impose Fees on Ethereum Rollups

Taking to social media, Zhang expressed his concern that such tariffs on rollups would trade Ethereum's long-term scalability and ecosystem potential

Ye Zhang, co-founder of the Ethereum layer-2 platform Scroll, has slammed recent proposals to impose fees on Ethereum rollups, calling this strategy “one of the most toxic ideas for Ethereum’s future.”

In a post on Monday, Zhang expressed his concern that such tariffs on rollups would trade Ethereum’s long-term scalability and ecosystem potential for short-term financial gains, fundamentally misunderstanding Ethereum’s true value proposition.

“People are discussing taxing rollups for providing data availability on Ethereum. This is one of the most toxic ideas I’ve heard yet, and it’s a testament to how far astray some in the community have wandered,” Zhang stated.

Highlighting the strength of Ethereum as a foundational asset, forming the primary financial layer for numerous rollup ecosystems, Zhang argued that generating revenue through fees isn’t the essence of Ethereum’s value proposition.

“It’s clear that ETH isn’t used as the primary gas token on all major L2s. But look at the tokens used: in most cases, it’s clear that ETH is still the dominant asset across L2s. This is true for Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, and Scroll itself,” he explained.

His comments follow a discussion among Ethereum stakeholders about ways to recapture lost network fee revenue.

Data following Ethereum’s EIP-4488 upgrade, which is intended to enhance layer-2 scalability, suggests that network fee revenues have declined sharply—from tens of millions daily down to roughly $570,000 per day by late March.

However, Zhang noted that Solana is vertically integrated, with the SOL token directly supporting the core network services. In contrast, ETH is already established.

“People are discussing taxing rollups for providing data availability on Ethereum. This is one of the most toxic ideas I’ve heard yet, and it’s a clear indication of how far astray some in the community have wandered. Suggesting that we should trade away bright futures where L2s flourish on Ethereum for a short-term revenue stream fundamentally misjudges what's valuable about Ethereum,” he stated.

According to Zhang, imposing such taxes on rollups could have unintended consequences, such as encouraging layer-2 ecosystems to adopt alternative non-Ethereum solutions for their data availability needs.

“If L2s migrate en masse to Chainlink or any other project for data availability, then ultimately, Ethereum will be worse off. People are thinking too short-term. We should be putting all our efforts into making sure that L2s choose to stay within the Ethereum ecosystem and continue building on Ethereum’s strengths.”

He concluded by warning that such a move could ultimately harm Ethereum’s dominance and relevance.

“Let's not squander this opportunity by engaging in desperate measures that will backfire. Let's continue to innovate and deploy new scalability solutions rapidly. We can do better and move faster.”

Zhang’s call to focus on accelerating scalability innovations and deploying important upgrades more quickly aligns with broader conversations within the Ethereum ecosystem about slow progress and delayed upgrade timelines.

Recently, a former Ethereum Foundation expert highlighted internal conflicts and confusion as key factors behind repeated setbacks in delivering essential Ethereum protocol updates.