Bessie Liu

Scroll, the latest Ethereum layer-2 network, has launched on mainnet.



According to block explorer <a href="https://scroll-sepolia.l2scan.co/">data</a>, Scroll’s testnet counts more than 900,000 wallet addresses as participants and has seen an estimated seven million transactions since August. Scroll’s launch follows a year of testnet operation that has seen over 55 million transactions, the Scroll team told Blockworks.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scroll">Scroll</a> is a general-purpose zkEVM roll-up intended to marry Ethereum’s network security with lower fees and latency. 



Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng told Blockworks in an interview that existing <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> projects will be able to directly deploy their projects onto Scroll and utilize its <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/zkEVM">zkEVM</a> technology. 



“The significance of zkEVM to developers lies in its ability to batch proofs in a highly efficient manner, offering faster transaction speeds at reduced costs. A key element in this process is bytecode-level compatibility,” Peng said.



Bytecode in computer programming is a language that simplifies complicated machine cryptography so that code can be more easily processed by computer hardware.&nbsp;



Deployed smart contracts will store the bytecode of their transactions on Scroll. These transactions will then be sent to a centralized zkEVM node that will prove that the state of the transaction is accurate without revealing the contents of the transaction.&nbsp;



Once the transaction is verified, the information will be published to Ethereum, updating the transaction’s state without the transaction being re-executed.



“Thanks to this feature, Ethereum devs can leverage all the same tools they are familiar with, ensuring that everything operates seamlessly right from the start,” Peng said.



Scroll’s mainnet code has been audited by four major auditing firms including: Zellic, Trail of Bits, OpenZeppelin and KALOS, Peng notes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Path to decentralization</h2>



The Scroll team is currently in its “research” phase for its decentralized prover network and decentralized sequencer.



“In the current instantiation, the protocol will halt if the sequencer goes offline, and no back-up is available,” Peng said.&nbsp;



Peng notes that the team is currently working on a protocol upgrade that will enable “forced batches.”&nbsp;



This means that the protocol will allow the permissionless publication of batches through the base layer even in the case of a sequencer halt.&nbsp;



“Mid-term, the goal is to minimize the probability of a sequencer halt through decentralization,” Peng said.&nbsp;



Although in its current state, Scroll is upgradeable via a multi-signature wallet controlled by its core team, there are plans to introduce a Security Council and a delayed upgrade mechanism in the near future.&nbsp;



This means that the protocol will only be upgradeable if it receives approval from the Security Council, and the multisig team will only have the capability of initiating delayed upgrades, Peng explains. 



“We have been working on an SGX-based second prover with an external team of TEE experts for more than 6 months, which will soon enable us to have a functioning <a href="https://ethresear.ch/t/2fa-zk-rollups-using-sgx/14462">Multi-Prover</a> deployed on Scroll,” she said.



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Ethereum L2 Scroll launches on mainnet

Sebastian Sinclair

It’s been a slow start to the year for crypto businesses seeking fresh capital.



Industry-related firms globally netted $2.42 billion in venture capital over 374 deals throughout Q1, 2023, marking a notable decline in value for the fourth straight quarter.



The year’s first quarterly period witnessed a 20% decrease from the previous quarter in total deal value, from $3 billion to $2.4 billion, <a href="https://my.pitchbook.com/search-results/s284388313/deal_chart" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data from Pitchbook</a> shows. That translated into roughly 5% less in deal numbers over the same period, from 394 to 374.



Investments have continued to fall following their peak 12 months ago, thanks largely to waning interest in digital assets and a number of scandals that continued to damage crypto’s image.



As it stands, this year’s second quarter is on track to clock a fifth consecutive decline in both deal count and value, standing at 129 and $867 million, respectively. It’s worth noting that there remain roughly 49 days left in Q2, or roughly seven weeks, to break that streak.



Despite the overall decline, there were a few positive developments at the beginning of the year, Pitchbook said in its &#8220;Emerging Tech: Crypto Report,&#8221; published Thursday.



Layer-2 scaling solutions, which aim to improve the scalability of crypto like bitcoin and ether, continued to attract significant investment.



Native zkEVM Ethereum layer-2, Scroll, which processes transactions off-chain, clinched a $50 million deal on March 6 with a post-money valuation of $1.8 billion.



Bitcoin scaling platform Blockstream also managed to raise $125 million in a late-stage deal on Jan. 24, valuing the company at $2.49 billion, data shows.



That’s still a far cry from 2021 and 2022’s biggest deals, including Fireblocks&#8217; $550 million later-stage VC in January of last year and Blockchain.com’s $490 million deal, three months later.



“We believe late-stage valuations are being skewed upwards, as we suspect that only outsized, up-rounds are being disclosed and down-rounds are being kept private,” Pitchbook said in its report.



“Additionally, Q1 2023’s sample size is small and represents only a single quarter of data. We expect rising seed and late-stage valuations to reverse throughout the year.”



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