Scroll

• Scroll is an Ethereum Layer 2 using zkEVM technology, aiming for bytecode-level equivalence with Ethereum.

• It processes transactions off-chain and posts validity proofs to Ethereum for settlement.

• SCR is the governance token.

• Total supply of 1 billion, with allocations to community, ecosystem and contributors.

• Used for governance over protocol parameters and treasury.

• Multi-year vesting for team and investor allocations.

Pros:

• Bytecode-equivalent design means Ethereum tooling works without adaptation.

• Long research-led development period before mainnet, with published cryptographic work.

• Academic rigour in the proving system relative to faster-shipping competitors.

Cons:

• The October 2024 airdrop drew sustained criticism over allocation, and a co-founder departed publicly afterwards.

• Activity has lagged competing Layer 2s despite the technical work.

• Sequencer remains centralised.

• Exposure to a research-led zkEVM with genuine cryptographic contributions.

• Equivalence with Ethereum lowers migration cost for developers.

• Weigh the gap between technical quality and actual usage.

• Bytecode-level EVM equivalence, meaning contracts and developer tools work identically to Ethereum with no changes.

• Most scaling solutions require developers to adapt contracts or tooling.

• Bytecode equivalence removes that migration cost entirely.

• Co-founded by Ye Zhang, Sandy Peng and Haichen Shen.

• Backed by Polychain and Bain Capital Crypto; one co-founder departed publicly after the token launch.

• No public ICO. SCR was distributed through an airdrop and Binance Launchpool in October 2024.

• Usage has not matched technical investment, which pressures long-term viability.

• Governance and team turnover following the token launch.

• Centralised sequencer.

• Layer 2 competition is severe and consolidating around a few winners.

Scroll's published research addresses a specific problem in zkEVM design: proving Ethereum execution is expensive precisely because the EVM was not built with proving in mind, so most implementations change the instruction set to make proofs cheaper and accept that contracts then behave slightly differently. Scroll's papers argue for proving the EVM as it is, accepting a harder proving problem in exchange for exact equivalence, and set out the circuit architecture and proof aggregation techniques intended to make that tractable. The work is unusually detailed about proving cost as the binding constraint rather than treating it as an implementation detail.