Solana Co-Founder Challenges Arbitrum Over Sequencer Costs and MEV

The debate regarding Layer 2 scaling efficiency versus Layer 1 performance intensified on September 6, 2026, as Anatoly "Toly" Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, countered claims made by Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder. The dispute centers on the economic impact of single sequencer models compared to permissionless market competition, specifically focusing on how transaction fees and bid-ask spreads affect the end-user experience across different blockchain architectures.

The Hidden Costs of Centralized Sequencing

Toly argued that the current structural design of Arbitrum leads to higher overall expenses for traders, despite the network's efforts to mitigate certain types of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). According to Yakovenko, the economic burden placed on users by a single sequencer pursuing shareholder profit maximization is significantly higher than the costs associated with traditional blockchain inefficiencies.

• The estimated cost from fee cuts alone is projected to exceed the typical losses incurred from sandwich trading.
• When factoring in wider bid-ask spreads, the total cost for users is estimated to be approximately 10 times higher than in more competitive environments.
• High spreads often act as a hidden tax, impacting liquidity provision and trade execution quality.

Defending the Arbitrum Ecosystem

The rebuttal followed statements from Steven Goldfeder, who warned the community against falling into a

narrative trap of simply comparing raw on-chain transaction prices.

Goldfeder highlighted that Arbitrum One and the Robinhood Chain are actively engineered to prevent harmful MEV practices, such as frontrunning, which can erode user funds even if the nominal gas fees are low.

MEV remains a primary point of contention in the Ethereum scaling debate, as different protocols prioritize either speed, cost-efficiency, or censorship resistance.

Market Competition vs. Profit Maximization

The core of Yakovenko’s critique lies in the philosophy of network governance. He posits that a permissionless market will inevitably outperform a model where a single entity controls transaction ordering. The Solana co-founder suggests that without open competition among validators or sequencers, the incentive to reduce spreads and fees is diminished, ultimately harming the DeFi ecosystem's long-term viability.

This technical disagreement underscores the ongoing competition between the Solana blockchain, which utilizes a high-throughput parallelized execution environment, and Ethereum Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum, which rely on optimistic rollups to manage congestion and reduce costs for the mainnet.