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maybe they like the look of them, and they pay more for that, have you ever ridden a air of pauls? And those srams are just cheapish road cranks, the truvativ omniumns are much better and have an actual track bcd.

I know the Omnium is better than the S300, but the S300 is still functionally superior to the Paul (not to mention the easy availability of replacement rings). The Paul is form over function, which makes it shit. I'm guessing they chose 2024 because it's tough (and cheap), compared with the high strength 6000 (S300) or 7000 (Omnium) alloys from which SRAM forge their cranks, and the Paul needs to be tough because the shape makes the localised cyclic stress higher, so they would crack like old fashioned cranks used to if they didn't use a 'soft' alloy. The poor shape is down to the need to keep the machining process simple, because cutting every one from billet is expensive per unit, as opposed to forging which is expensive to set up and then cheap per unit. FFS, they even use cheap 6061 for the rings, when everybody else uses the much harder wearing but expensive 7075, and they still can't keep the price competitive. If Paul was doing something not available in mass production, like extreme crank lengths, there might be some point to it. Functionally, the Paul is no further forward that the ancient TA Cyclotourist/Stronglight 49D, but without the versatility and wide ranging customisations which were the virtue of those venerable designs.

Have you ridden an external bearing crankset (HT2, GXP, UltraTorque or MegaExo)? After the first hundred yards, you realise that square taper is ready for the dustbin of history. It's surprising how much flex you didn't notice until it wasn't there any more. I know pro track racers are still, for the most part, stuck with the old technology, but that's more about excessive conservatism in track racing circles than anything else. Hopefully, the track market will skip a generation and jump straight to BB30 when the next iterations of the serious frames come out. There's certainly room for it in the huge BB shells of the current crop