Seeing new public chains like SEI and Sui touting ultra-low Gas fees and making a splash, I really can't help but laugh. Sui claims to be ten times cheaper than Sol, and SEI is even more exaggerated, directly challenging with a hundred times cheaper—this attitude, rather than being a technological breakthrough, is more like a big clearance sale in an ecological battle.

But here's the problem—there's no free lunch in the world, and this principle applies to public chains as well. Gas fees can drop close to zero only through two paths. The first is project teams heavily subsidizing users with VC funds, but this money won't last long. What happens when funding runs out? Fees will have to rise again. The second, more painful path, is that the costs haven't disappeared—they've just been shifted. Either hidden in crazy token issuance or buried in future "value-added services" that act as timed bombs. Every penny you save on Gas fees now will eventually be paid back with interest in the form of token devaluation.

This is essentially a new era's cultivation plan. First, attract users into the ecosystem with the hook of "free" to let them deposit assets and form habits. Once the ecosystem scales up, various hidden fee mechanisms will quietly go live. The infrastructure that seems as smooth as air on the surface is actually weaving an increasingly tight net. In the long run, all costless internal competition ultimately points to the same end—monopoly and harvesting.