Solana co-founder: If you cannot run a validator yourself, it is not permissionless

Anatoly Yakovenko (toly), co-founder of Solana Labs, responded to discussions about the decentralization level of Hyperliquid, stating that he has raised the same criticism for all L2s: the key to determining whether a system is permissionless lies in whether users can participate in any part of the protocol stack using their own resources without approval from a trusted third party.

If they cannot, it is not permissionless. Toly stated that no matter what users do, they cannot run the Base sequencer or the Hyperliquid sequencer, so this is the same issue he criticized with L2s.