After over a year of building zkEVM-based zkRollup in close collaboration with the PSE (Privacy and Scaling Explorations) group at the Ethereum Foundation, Scroll are releasing the pre-alpha version of Scroll for external testers! In the spirit of building in the open with the community, Scroll have prioritized getting community feedback quickly with this initial release.
If you’d like to be an early tester, sign up at signup.scroll.io for access. Scroll will invite as many testers as possible while we drive towards a permissionless, public release.
What’s in the pre-alpha testnet?
This initial release will be run on a private PoA fork of Ethereum (the testnet L1) operated by Scroll. On top of this private chain, Scroll will run a testnet Scroll L2 supporting the following features:
Users will be able to play with a few key demo applications such as a Uniswap fork with familiar web interfaces such as Metamask.
Users will be able to view the state of the Scroll testnet via block explorers.
Scroll will run a node that supports unlimited read operations (e.g. getting the state of accounts) and user-initiated transactions involving interactions with the pre-deployed demo applications (e.g. transfers of ERC-20 tokens or swaps of tokens).
Rollers will generate and aggregate validity proofs for part of the zkEVM circuits to ensure a stable release. In the next testnet phase, Scroll will ramp up this set of zkEVM circuits.
Bridging assets between these testnet L1 and L2s will be enabled through a smart contract bridge, though arbitrary message passing will not be supported in this release.
Scroll’s pre-alpha testnet will be the first chance for early users and developers to interact with infrastructure and experience dapp workflows on Scroll. As scroll scale node infrastructure, we will relax some of the performance-motivated restrictions and onboard more testers.
What’s next for Scroll?
Soon after pre-alpha testnet, scroll will be deploying a more open and permissionless alpha testnet. This will be deployed on a public Ethereum testnet and will be open to the public. In particular, community can expect the following features:
Allowing developers to deploy smart contracts
Allowing anyone to run an archival Scroll node
Generating and aggregating more pieces of the zkEVM proof to be verified on-chain
As scroll move step by step towards an eventual mainnet release, scroll will enable successively more pieces of final architecture, including a decentralized Roller network and integrations with EVM-native developer tools. In the next few weeks, scroll will release a series of expository articles and posts explaining Scroll’s architecture and the technical vision that has informed Scroll’s development decisions. Stay tuned to learn more about these!
Scroll’s Release Philosophy
Scroll’s plan for scaling Ethereum and serving billions of users and developers is a long-term roadmap that requires careful consideration and execution. Scroll firmly believe in the future of the zkEVM as a key to scaling Ethereum, and as such, are committed to releasing it in a way that allows us to work through any challenges in a focused manner and incorporate feedback alongside roadmap.
By giving users, developers and the broader community progressively more functionality to test instead of releasing all features at once, scroll aim to isolate any bugs and UX difficulties early and often, allowing us to build towards the most robust, scalable solution that will stand the test of time.
📜Join and learn more
To become an early tester or contributor, sign up to try out pre-alpha testnet at signup.scroll.io. In the meantime, if vision of scaling Ethereum in an open and community-driven way resonates with you, scroll are looking for values-aligned individuals to help Scroll become the most developer- and user-friendly scaling solution for Ethereum.
If you are a ZK researcher, ZKP, Go or Solidity developer, or a GPU engineer, scroll are working on many interesting technical challenges at the edge of what’s possible. Come build cutting-edge solutions to these problems with us in the open!
If you love nurturing and growing ecosystems or communities, scroll are looking for developer advocates and community organizers to make sure scroll are building in a community-aligned and user-friendly way.
To learn more about these roles and about Scroll, check out website, Twitter, Discord, or jobs page. If you want to get straight to the code and build with us, you can find repos at github.com/scroll-tech and github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/zkevm-circuits.
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