Idealistic Ethereum community-built zkEVM Scroll launching in weeks

After two years of development, a group of Ethereum idealists are close to launching their zero-knowledge EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), Scroll, developed with Ethereum values ​​in mind.

While several zero-knowledge EVMs already exist today, Scroll co-founder Ye Zhang told Cointelegraph at Token2049 that the project was “idealistic” as the team stuck to the philosophy and principles that Ethereum already cultivates. .

Zhang said they have been working on this primarily as a "labor of love," driven by a shared vision to scale Ethereum while staying true to its decentralization principles.

He added that the project was more of human interest than simply solving computational problems, “we started in an open source way, in a community-driven way,” he said.

"We can grow this community very organically and then increase our network effect, not in a very silly way, not in a very aggressive marketing-driven way."

The new zkEVM will be released in a few weeks, after undergoing extensive testing and code audits. Zhang said that Scroll will be launched after some final testing and that major projects like Uniswap and Aave are ready to be deployed on Scroll at launch.

The mathematician believes that zk-rollups are the “holy grail” or best-in-class layer 2 scaling solutions, which are also very economical and secure.

However, Scroll is entering a crowded ecosystem that already features zkEVM solutions from Polygon. ImmutableStarkWare and ConsenSys Line, which thrown out in August.

Zhang stated that some of the other systems, such as Linea, have some "untested" parts in the circuit, but he believes that Scroll provides a "complete test" of all Ethereum "opcodes" and transaction components.

"So it's not just about compatibility, but also a complete test of everything we already have," he said.

Related: Buterin gives his opinion on the impact of zk-EVM on decentralization and security

Scroll is a layer 2 scaling project that has been in development for two years. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to compress data off-chain, meaning only proofs are sent on-chain, allowing for higher performance.

As always, we're posting another ecosystem update, highlighting some of the latest projects joining the Scroll ecosystem.

This week we cover DeFi aggregators and permissionless lending protocols. https://t.co/1G4ErzAB00

— Scroll (@Scroll_ZKP) September 16, 2023

The EVM component allows for full native compatibility with any existing Ethereum software and applications.

The initial setup will still involve some centralization, such as sequencers, Zhang said, but the roadmap will decentralize it even more over time.

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