Scroll: A Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine

Our lord and savior, Vitalik Buterin, has always been a massive advocate of Zero Knowledge Rollups (zk-rollups).

“In the medium to long term, zk-rollups will win out in all use cases as zk-SNARK technology improves.” — Vitalik Buterin

Well, it's been a relatively slow bear market, and there has yet to be any innovation on the tech side. Yes, multiple tokens have gone on to do 10-100x, but we really have yet to have a strong narrative. Not like with the layer one rotation. If a bull market were to return with Quantitative worldwide easing, we would get another liquidity rotation. Let's look at a new zk-rollup, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM): Scroll.

Scroll is a new technology that aims to provide fast and efficient transactions, complete decentralization, and private transactions. It does this by using a technology called zk-Rollup and off-chain systems. The team behind Scroll is trying to create a more efficient and easy-to-use solution than existing options. They have chosen to use zk-rollup, a technology that allows many transactions to be processed simultaneously, resulting in faster confirmation times.

The next step was to make this technology accessible to users and developers. They realized the best way to do this is by creating a system similar to the existing EVM. This is a complex task, but the team has decided to take it on because it will lead to the best experience for users and developers. The zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) proves that the transaction has been executed correctly and provides guarantees on the state transition of the EVM.

This will allow Scroll to support the same developer tools that are used for Ethereum.

What is zkEVM?

A zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) is a virtual machine that is a layer-2 scaling solution on Ethereum, improving transaction throughput. It generates zero-knowledge proofs to verify the correctness of programs while executing smart contracts that support zero-knowledge technology.

Thanks to this process, many transactions become one, inherently reducing the costs and increasing the throughput of the overall network.

zkEVMs are thus very similar to zk-rollups, and they can be considered the same but upgraded technology that is used in the zk-rollups. zkEVM tries to replicate the environment of Ethereum as a "roll-up". This means it wants to allow the developers to build on these services and technologies similar to the native Ethereum network. Thus, all the zkEVM applied projects are trying to reach the same goal: to create a zk-rollup experience that feels like the layer-1 network of Ethereum.

This was lacking before, as smart contracts, simple token swaps and payments needed the ability to execute. However, through zkEVM, this should be possible due to its characteristics.

The team behind the zkEVM discovered that creating these proofs requires a lot of computational resources, which would slow down the system and make it less efficient. So they created a decentralized network called the Roller network to fix this issue. This network comprises many computers that work together to generate the proofs needed for the system to function correctly.

This network is permissionless, meaning anyone can join and contribute their computational resources. This design allows for a much more scalable system, as more computers can be added to the network as needed. Allowing anyone to join the network also incentivizes people to build better machines and contribute them to the network, further improving the system's performance.

Moreover, the team will initially build GPU prover solutions internally and open-source them for public usage. They are also exploring with several hardware companies in the future to create more advanced machines like ASIC and FPGA solutions which will help reduce the latency and cost for proof generation.

Lastly, by building this decentralized network of provers, the team demonstrates its commitment to creating a more decentralized and open system. They plan to decentralize other parts of the system to make it even more resistant to censorship and more robust overall.

There are significant technical benefits to Scroll's design.

The team behind the Scroll system has designed the infrastructure that generates the necessary proofs to be highly efficient and able to handle a large number of computational resources at once. As the network grows and more computers join, the system can handle many proofs simultaneously, making it faster and more efficient.

The team plans to make it open to everyone by building an open-sourcing GPU prover solution to encourage more people to join and contribute to the network. This allows anyone to build and run their proof-generating machines. As the network matures, the team is exploring other advanced technology like ASIC and FPGA solutions with several hardware companies.

By doing this, the team hopes there will be vigorous competition among hardware providers, exponentially decreasing the latency and cost for a proof generation. In addition, it is a way to promote better hardware solutions and give the community more power and control instead of relying only on the Scroll team.

The ideas and concepts discussed have guided the team behind Scroll to create a system that works well with the existing Ethereum community and can handle many users in the future.

They are committed to a scaling path that can accommodate billions of users who still need to start using the system. Shortly, they will share more information and technical details about the testnet, token launch, and more. A token has not been announced for now, but they will launch one.

So be on the lookout for a potential airdrop.