Scroll Reduces Gas Fees by 2x with Curie Upgrade on Mainnet, Potential Airdrop Speculation Grows

Scroll Unveils Scroll Canvas: A Unique Space to Display your Achievements

Last weekend, Scroll introduced Scroll Canvas, an innovative platform for showcasing on-chain credentials, status, and achievements earned within the Scroll ecosystem.

As users engage with various Scroll projects and accumulate Badges, their narrative is illustrated on Scroll Canvas.

This on-chain space transcends mere tokens, reflecting aspects of users' social lives and reputations.

Through integration with the Ethereum Attestation Service, each badge on Scroll Canvas is imbued with a mark of authenticity.

Unlike non-fungible tokens (NFTs), these Badges are non-transferable, serving as verifiable evidence of the unique qualities and milestones users have attained through their involvement, contributions, and achievements within the Scroll community.

Verified, immutable, and intrinsically tied to users' wallets, their Canvas becomes a genuine reflection of their impact on Scroll.

Scroll Canvas is an open-source platform, inviting anyone to contribute to its development and expansion.

This collaborative approach ensures that Scroll Canvas evolves in response to the needs and ideas of its users, cultivating a dynamic and innovative community environment.

Scroll's Cure Upgrade Reduces Gas Fees by 2x

In the previous Bernoulli upgrade, Scroll shifted rollup transaction data from calldata to blob space to lower data availability costs.

The subsequent Curie upgrade, activated on its mainnet on 3 July, further enhances efficiency by compressing blob data using the zstd algorithm.

This compression reduces data size by an average of 2.8 times, enabling each blob to accommodate more transactions and decreasing data availability costs per transaction.

The Curie upgrade was initially deployed on the Scroll Sepolia testnet on 17 June, for extensive testing prior to its mainnet launch.

This upgrade halves gas fees on the Scroll chain, introducing data availability (DA) compression to reduce Layer 1 DA size and associated gas fees.

It also integrates two transaction types, EIP-1559 and EIP-2930, along with a base fee schema to stabilize Scroll's gas fees.

Furthermore, the upgrade supports new EVM opcodes TLOAD, TSTORE, and MCOPY, which are part of the Cancun hard fork.

These advancements continue to optimise Scroll's ecosystem, enhancing user experience and network efficiency.

Earn Scroll Marks Through Scroll Sessions

On 17 April, Scroll introduced Scroll Sessions, a loyalty programme designed to reward community members with Scroll Marks for their participation and engagement within the Scroll ecosystem.

Through Sessions, users can earn Marks that reflect their on-chain activity.

Starting with Session Zero, participants could obtain Scroll Marks by bridging assets to Scroll, a successful initiative that saw the Scroll ecosystem's Total Value Locked (TVL) surge from $180 million to over $700 million.

The eligibility criteria for Session Zero involved bridging ETH or wstETH to Scroll using the native bridge or STONE via LayerZero, with Marks accrued simply by holding these assets on Scroll.

No further transactions or activities were required.

Future sessions will expand the programme's features to ensure it remains inclusive, enjoyable, and engaging for the Scroll community.

Scroll Marks are also being retroactively awarded to long-standing community members who have had assets deployed on Scroll since 10 October 2023, the date of the Scroll Mainnet genesis block.

Currently, Scroll is in Session One, which commenced on 21 June and introduces additional methods to earn Marks.

Users can now receive extra Marks for providing liquidity to Ambient and Nuri DEXes on Scroll or for lending and borrowing on Aave and Rho Markets.

Marks are only awarded for these activities when using the eligible assets within the specified protocols, including Layerbank, Cog Finance, Pencils Protocol, and Tranchess.

Participants will continue to qualify for Marks by bridging and holding assets, as in Session Zero.

However, to maximise Marks earnings, users should remember the formula: Marks = Value x Action x Time.

Scroll has also unveiled a new user interface that allows community members to track their Marks throughout the Sessions.

So Much Talk About Scroll, So What is it?

Scroll is a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM)-based zkRollup operating on Ethereum, offering native compatibility for existing Ethereum applications and tools.

It processes transactions off-chain and submits concise proofs of validity on-chain, leading to increased throughput and reduced costs compared to the Ethereum base layer.

As a Layer 2 network, Scroll handles transactions off Ethereum on its own network before porting the transaction data back to Ethereum, enhancing transaction speed and lowering costs.

Built with a community-centric approach and fully open-source from its inception, Scroll aims to scale blockchains for accessibility by billions of users.

The team believes that decentralised computing platforms should not be the property of any single team or company but should uphold and promote principles that represent the broader community.

Like Ethereum, Scroll is expected to be shaped by the community over time.

In the zkEVM space, other networks besides Scroll exist, such as StarkNet and zkSync.

With the launch of the Scroll Alpha Testnet, Scroll is moving closer to enhancing the Layer 2 landscape with its technology.

Scroll's mainnet was launched in October 2023, and the team has raised $80 million across various funding rounds led by Polychain Capital, reaching a valuation of $1.8 billion.

Key value propositions offered by Scroll include:

1) Hierarchical Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) System: Scroll employs this proving scheme to achieve efficient verification through succinct proofs, enhancing compatibility for decentralised applications (dApps) on Layer 2 solutions.

2) Efficient Communication Channels: Scroll is dedicated to building a robust Layer 2 ecosystem through open innovation, focusing on establishing communication channels between dApps on Scroll and those on other Layer 2 networks. This fosters strategic partnerships and potential synergies that benefit users.

3) L2 Mining: Scroll introduces robust and permissionless Layer 2 mining, incentivising miners to generate ZKPs for users. The separation of transaction packing and mining reduces the maximal extractable value (MEV) issue, making Scroll more attractive to users due to network robustness and protection against negative MEVs.

Ultimately, Scroll aims to achieve decentralisation and censorship resistance on par with Ethereum's base layer, pursuing these goals in a step-by-step manner.

Scroll's TVL Shot Pass $1B on 16 July but was Short-Lived

Scroll's total value locked (TVL) is experiencing rapid growth, outpacing all other Ethereum Layer 2s, thanks to its 'Session One' points programme.

According to DeFiLlama, the network's TVL more than doubled in the past month, soaring from $435 million on 15 June to over $1 billion.

This surge is likely influenced by airdrop farming, as Scroll remains one of the few major L2s without a native token.

However, its TVL has since decreased to $655.99 million.

Scroll's Co-Founder Refutes Investor Exit Rumours

On 10 May, speculations arose regarding investor withdrawals from Scroll.

Ye Zhang, Scroll's co-founder, publicly refuted these rumours.

Addressing social media queries, Zhang emphasized the lack of credible information supporting such claims.

He expressed uncertainty about the rumours' origin, suggesting they might be intended to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) and diminish competition following the recent increase in the company's TVL.

Speculations of a Potential Scroll Airdrop

Scroll is currently without its own token but could potentially launch one in the future, possibly in Q4 this year.

According to their roadmap on Discord, Scroll is developing an incentive mechanism to encourage network participation.

Their Scroll Marks system rewards engagement within the ecosystem, strongly suggesting a forthcoming token and potential airdrops for early users.

Having raised over $80 million from prominent VCs like Polychain and Sequoia, the likelihood of a token launch is high.

Though still in the pre-alpha stage, interacting with the testnet may qualify users for future airdrops.

Meet the Scroll Team

Scroll was co-founded in early 2021 by Sandy Peng, Ye Zhang, and Haichen Shen with a vision of scaling Ethereum to a billion users through an EVM-equivalent ZK-rollup.

Peng brings extensive experience in business development, project strategy, and data curation.

Zhang and Shen are experts in computer science, open-source protocol engineering, and cryptography.

Notably, Shen previously worked at Amazon as a senior applied scientist specialising in AI compilers.

Sandy Peng, Co-Founder

Peng, co-founder of Scroll, holds a degree from Cambridge University and has a background in research at the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission.

Since 2017, she has been involved in Web3 project investment and has experience in game development and product management.

Currently, she focuses on non-technical aspects of the Scroll team.

Her socials: X and LinkedIn

Ye Zhang, Co-Founder

Zhang, co-founder of Scroll, holds an undergraduate degree from Peking University and has been dedicated to ZK proofs since 2018.

His research primarily focused on hardware acceleration for ZK proofs and the principles of ZK cryptography algorithms.

His Ph.D. work is also centred around ZK technology.

His socials: X and LinkedIn

Haichen Shen, Co-Founder

Shen, co-founder of Scroll, leads the engineering team and is a passionate open-source contributor.

His contributions span projects such as zkEVM, Apache TVM, and RAF.

Previously, Shen was a senior applied scientist at Amazon Web Services, specialising in AI compilers.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Washington and a bachelor's degree in computer science from Tsinghua University's Institute for Theoretical Computer Science.

His socials: X and LinkedIn

Scroll's Socials

Website

X

Discord

Enhancing the Layer 2 Landscape with Time

Scroll is emerging as a favoured Layer 2 blockchain due to its unlimited scalability, robust security, and unmatched convenience.

Its ZK-rollup services significantly reduce costs and enhance speed while preserving Ethereum's security guarantees.

The team noted:

“At Scroll, we continuously work on new features and improvements to enhance the Scroll zkEVM. In the coming months, we plan to use proof recursion to aggregate multiple batch proofs into a single validity proof for L1 verification, to further reduce gas fees.”

With ongoing upgrades and features designed to foster a user-centric ecosystem, Coinlive is quite optimistic that Scroll is well-positioned for longevity.

However, whether it will truly stand out remains to be seen.