TVL increased to 40 million USD, what participation opportunities are there in the Layer2 newcomer Scroll ecosystem?

Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher

Since the announcement of the mainnet launch on October 17, the total value locked (TVL) in crypto assets on the Scroll chain has increased to $39 million, and the official cross-chain bridge Scroll Bridge has bridged a total of over $46.3 million worth of ETH.

According to data from the Scrollscan browser, as of November 15, approximately 4.71 million transactions have been completed on the Scroll mainnet, with over 434,000 transactions on November 9 alone. The current daily average transaction count is around 100,000, and the number of on-chain wallet addresses has surpassed 2 million (approximately 2.06 million), with a total of 800,000 blocks generated.

In just one month since the mainnet launch, how has Scroll, as a newcomer in the Layer 2 space, achieved such outstanding results? What specific measures have been taken to develop the ecosystem? What participation opportunities are available in its ecosystem?

Scroll Attracts Developers Through "NFT Airdrops and Hackathon Events"

After approximately 15 months of development, Scroll completed the transition from testnet to mainnet, with its zkEVM mainnet producing its first genesis block on October 10, followed by the official mainnet launch on October 17. Currently, users can bridge assets from Ethereum to the Scroll network through the official Scroll Bridge and enjoy various applications within the Scroll ecosystem.

As an Ethereum scaling solution based on zkRollup, Scroll is a fully EVM-equivalent zkEVM that aims to achieve Ethereum scalability without sacrificing security, developer, or user experience, and has attracted significant capital attention since its launch.

According to the crypto data platform RootData, Scroll's total publicly disclosed funding has reached $83 million. In March of this year, Scroll raised $50 million at a valuation of $1.8 billion, with investors including Polychain Capital, Sequoia China, Variant Fund, Newman Capital, and IOSG Ventures; in April 2022, Scroll completed a $30 million Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital; prior to that, it raised approximately $3 million from angel investors.

After announcing the mainnet launch, Scroll's on-chain TVL surged to approximately $40 million, briefly becoming the fastest-growing Layer 2 network, and is now ranked among the top 15 in the entire Layer 2 market.

Although Scroll's TVL is somewhat lower compared to other zkEVM networks like zkSync Era ($420 million), Starknet ($134 million), Polygon zkEVM ($110 million), and Linea ($90 million), it is important to note that Scroll is a latecomer in the Layer 2 market in terms of mainnet launch timing. In terms of ecosystem growth rate, Scroll is not inferior to any zkEVM network.

Following the mainnet announcement, the Scroll team has released and implemented a series of positive news and actions to stimulate ecosystem development.

First, on October 26, Scroll announced the launch of Scroll Origins NFT for early contract deployers during the genesis phase to commemorate the mainnet launch.

To obtain the Scroll Origins NFT, users must deploy relevant smart contracts such as DEX, NFT, GameFi, etc., within 60 days of the mainnet genesis block (from October 10 to December 15). Additionally, based on the deployment time, different phases will be established, and according to the official statement, NFTs from different phases may contain different surprises. Many users regard this NFT as an important reference for future airdrops from Scroll.

Since the announcement of the Origins NFT rewards, the average daily number of verified contracts has increased by over 90%, with 2,438 verified contracts completed on November 8 alone. According to OKLink data, the total number of smart contracts on Scroll has now reached 1.04 million.

In addition, in terms of ecosystem project development, Scroll has attracted many excellent developers and project deployments through hackathon events. In October alone, three hackathon-related events were held, including the ETHGlobal online hackathon, ETH HongKong hackathon, and ETH Hangzhou hackathon. During the ETHGlobal online hackathon, over 230 submissions were made on the Scroll Sepolia testnet, resulting in 73 deployed projects.

From these public actions, it is evident that the current focus of Scroll's network development is to attract developers, aiming to incentivize more active developers to deploy applications on the platform, which is a crucial prerequisite for attracting a large influx of users. Currently, Scroll does not have a clear incentive program for users.

Moreover, there are still some issues with the mainnet user experience, with many users complaining that gas fees on the Scroll chain are not cheap. In response, Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng stated in an interview that due to the urgent launch of the Scroll mainnet, there are indeed some existing issues, and there is room for optimization regarding gas fees. An upgrade will be implemented to address the high gas fee problem.

What Participation Opportunities Are Available in the Scroll Ecosystem?

Although the Scroll mainnet has just launched, there are already hundreds of ecosystem projects deployed on-chain. According to the Manta ecosystem data collected by the crypto data platform RootData, Scroll ecosystem applications cover various fields including DEX, lending, DeFi, NFT, GameFi, and domain names. Currently, mainstream DeFi applications like Uniswap and Aave have plans to deploy on the Scroll mainnet, and on November 14, a proposal was made to deploy Maker DAO's SparkLend here. So, what projects in the Scroll ecosystem can users participate in?

• Official Bridge Scroll Bridge

Scroll Bridge (https://scroll.io/bridge) is the cross-chain bridge launched by Scroll, allowing users to bridge assets from Ethereum to Scroll.

However, currently, when users bridge assets from the Ethereum mainnet to the Scroll network, each gas fee is approximately 20~40 Gwei (around $15~$30), which is relatively high and not suitable for small cross-chain transactions. This has been a point of complaint among users, and co-founder Sandy Peng stated that the team will soon optimize the cross-chain gas fees.

In addition to the official cross-chain bridge, users can also choose third-party bridges such as Orbiter Finance, Owlto Finance, rhino.fi, and XY.Finance.

• Ve (3.3) DEX Skydrome

Skydrome (https://app.skydrome.finance/swap), formerly known as QuillDEX, officially changed its name to Skydrome in September this year, aiming to become the representative Ve (3.3) exchange on Scroll (Velodrome).

Velodrome is a DEX on Optimism, evolved from Solidly, which was launched by Andre Cronje. Its native token, VELO, adopts the Ve(3.3) model. Skydrome operates similarly to Velodrome, with its native token SKY also using the Ve (3.3) model, and veSKY holders receive protocol fees, bribes, and governance rights.

On October 27, the native token SKY on the Skydrome platform conducted its IDO.

• Decentralized Trading Platform Zebra

Zebra Protocol (https://zebra.xyz/#/swap) is also the native DEX of the AMM mechanism on the Scroll chain, a fork of Uniswap V2.

Currently, Zebra Protocol has a TVL of $3.11 million, making it the DEX platform with the highest TVL within the Scroll ecosystem.

In addition, other native DEX platforms on Scroll include Papyrus Swap, the one-stop DEX platform SpaceFi, and cross-chain deployed platforms like SyncSwap and iZiSwap.

• Lending Protocol CogFinance

Cog Finance (https://www.cog.finance/) is the native lending protocol within the Scroll ecosystem, currently supporting only three wrapped assets for deposits: rETH, wstETH, and WETH.

However, it is important to note that another native lending protocol on Scroll, Lendora Protocol, was recently reported to be a suspected exit scam, and the website is now offline.

Therefore, whether it is DEX, lending, or other emerging DeFi applications, users need to pay special attention to fund security and try to use small amounts.

• Domain Scroll Name Service

Scroll Name Service ( https://app.scrollns.com/ ) can be abbreviated as "ScrollNS" and is a full-chain domain project within the Scroll ecosystem, used to generate decentralized domain names ending with ".scroll". Currently, three-digit domain names are priced at 0.25E, four-digit domain names at 0.065E, and five-digit domain names at 0.0031E.

• Web3 Role-Playing Game ChatNPC

ChatNPC is a native Web3 role-playing game within the Scroll ecosystem, which is an AI-driven virtual character negotiation game.

In this game, there will be some AI-driven senior Web3 characters such as NFT holders and crypto experts, and players can negotiate with them on specific issues and compete with other players for a share of the prize pool.

• On-Chain Governance Platform Jokerace

Jokerace is an on-chain governance platform where community organizations can deploy "competitions" to formulate, execute, and reward decisions. These competitions can solicit user responses to specific issues and allow them to vote on their preferred responses. It is typically used in scenarios such as bounty tasks, hackathons, grants, awards, prediction games, protocol feature requests, and DAO governance.

According to RootData, the platform completed a $2 million pre-seed funding round in August, with participants including 1kx, Boys Club, Seed Club Ventures, and over ninety angel investors.

The reason for mentioning this application in the Scroll ecosystem is that it provides an opportunity for ordinary users who want to obtain Scroll Origins NFT, even if they do not understand technology or deploy smart contracts.

How it works: Users can initiate a creative "competition" on Jokerace to deploy projects on Scroll and offer some rewards to those who submit relevant ideas. This way, even without knowledge of smart contracts or project details, users can have a chance to obtain NFTs by leveraging the efforts of others.