LayerZero sparks controversy by making it possible to buy testnet ether

One thing with crypto is that there's a way to monetize pretty much everything.

In this instance, LayerZero has created a way for developers and crypto users to buy and sell ether native to the Ethereum Goerli testnet. That's right; you can now trade ether that's on a testnet and can be created at will.

The Goerli testnet is a clone of the Ethereum blockchain designed for testing purposes. It is deliberately not used as a means of value transfer. It's run by the community with contributors from various Ethereum client teams, like Geth and Nethermind. But getting hold of testnet ether can be a pain, as you either have to receive it from a core contributor or use faucets that deliver small amounts of ether but require anti-spam measures like captchas (and can be time-consuming to use).

LayerZero is attempting to solve this problem by creating an option to buy the testnet ether at a low price instead of going through the standard routes. "Get Goerli-ETH quickly, easily, and begin testing ASAP without camping faucets or feeling stranded," the project said on Twitter.

Someone using this service will essentially be selling their ether on the mainnet for a wrapped version of the testnet ether, and then this will be bridged to the testnet and unwrapped. The bridging service is based on LayerZero's cross-chain swap technology.

The service has proved to be controversial. "Testnet tokens should be free," said Mudit Gupta, chief information security officer at Polygon. "Monetizing Goerli ether hurts all faucet providers because spam increases." He added that he would be selling a large amount of testnet ether on this market to lower the price (and use the proceeds to fund public goods).

LayerZero co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino was not dismayed by this. "Exactly the goal," he replied. "$0.0000001 and [actually] accessible is significantly better than $0.0 and literally impossible to get and hoarded by all of the whales."

"I promise you, 99% of people writing code on Goerli would rather pay $1 and get the amount they want than pay $0 and spend 3-48 hours of their time to try to get enough faucet sniping to do anything," he added."

That said, the price of the testnet ether might not make much of a difference. As many users pointed out, the amount required to pay the Ethereum fees on mainnet to execute the transactions — around $15 to $25 — is where the actual costs lie.