Arbitrum and Solana Co-Founders Debate Transaction Costs and MEV Protection

ChainCatcher report: Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder and Solana co-founder Toly engaged in a debate over on-chain transaction fees, MEV protection, and the single sequencer model. Steven stated that surface transaction fees alone cannot be compared. Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain actively guard against front-running and most harmful MEV, while some chains claiming lower fees have higher hidden MEV costs, including front-running targeting retail users. He emphasized that he would rather pay upfront for transparent fees than incur hidden losses such as front-running and sandwich attacks for the sake of lower transaction costs. Toly countered that Arbitrum’s current bid-ask spread is more unfavorable and its fees are higher. Even just the 10% cut it takes from fees, when converted into basis points, exceeds the cost of sandwich attacks—estimated by him to be roughly ten times higher—and this does not yet account for the impact of the spread. He stressed: “A single sequencer focused on maximizing shareholder value can never outperform permissionless competition.”