Strategic Direction & Focus Areas
A guiding framework for the Ecosystem Growth Council (EGC) | Last updated: September 3rd, 2025
Why Strategic Guidance Matters
Scroll is still in its early days, with much of its growth still ahead. Together, we have the chance to grow a network that is useful, inspiring, and built to last. That requires focusing our energy where it makes the biggest difference. This document sets a shared direction for the EGC and the wider community on all matters of growth, ensuring that proposals, programs, and initiatives push the ecosystem forward with intention and consistency.
It serves as a reference point rather than a fixed plan. The aim is to stay anchored in our growth vision while remaining open to new opportunities. What follows is shaped by lessons from past research, community conversations, and insights from across other ecosystems.
Our Vision and Values in Action
Every growth decision we make stems from a clear vision of Scrollâs role in Web3. We are building an open, zkEVM-powered Layer 2 that scales Ethereum while staying true to its values of transparency, decentralization, and community ownership.
Scroll is designed to be the natural home for builders creating meaningful, long-lasting applications, from financial infrastructure to products that reach everyday users. Achieving that vision means fostering an environment where ideas can grow, supported by a strong economic foundation, engaged users, and local and global communities working together. This direction helps guide growth investments so they consistently add long-term value to the network.
Strategic Focus Areas
As a young ecosystem, Scroll doesnât have the luxury to do everything at once. Spreading efforts too thin will only dilute impact. Focus is our edge. By concentrating on a small set of high-leverage areas, we can drive real progress, learn faster, and build a stronger foundation for sustainable growth.
Weâve identified four key areas of focus, each rooted in Scrollâs purpose and values, insights from the EGC, and a deep review of community inputs, proposal drafts, governance discussions, forum threads, research documents, and lessons from other ecosystems.
While all four areas matter, our approach is not to lock in fixed priorities upfront. Instead, the EGC will remain flexible and responsive, allocating time, attention, and funding toward the proposals with the strongest strategic fit and highest potential impact on Scrollâs long-term growth.
Builder Support and Liquidity Infrastructure may currently present more ready-to-activate opportunities, but User Acquisition & Retention is equally important, especially where it connects to product-market fit or community-led content strategies. Budget allocations between programs are therefore not pre-defined and may shift over time based on the quality of proposals, measurable ecosystem outcomes, and emerging opportunities.
Program Area 4 - Community Building and Local Ecosystems - remains out of scope for direct EGC funding at this time. It will be fully led by the Community Council, with the EGC offering support and coordination where useful, but not allocating funds directly.
1. Builder Onboarding and Support
Everything starts with builders. They create the products that attract users, define the Scroll experience, and drive on-chain activity. If we fail to support builders early and well, nothing else will follow.
We need to help founders go from idea to scale with clear pathways and deep support. That means investing in structured programs as compared to simple one-off grants, and providing mentorship, venture support, onboarding kits, SDKs, and tailored tooling. We also need to regionalize talent funnels and fund projects that demonstrate real-world value.
A key part of this is building a founder-to-founder network. Founders should not only receive funding and mentoring, but also connect with and support each other, sharing distribution channels, credibility, and product feedback in ways that make the ecosystem self-reinforcing.
2. Liquidity and Economic Infrastructure
For Scroll to work well, there has to be liquidity. Builders need it to launch and grow their apps. Users need it to transact. The SCR token also needs to have real-world uses, such as staking, payments, and app integrations, beyond just trading or speculation.
Liquidity is not only about having enough tokens. It also depends on important infrastructure like oracles, KYC providers, transaction monitoring, aggregators, dashboards, and future aggregation layers such as unified wallet experiences. These tools are necessary but expensive, and Labs should not carry this cost alone.
We have also seen that strong products with effective go-to-market strategies, like EtherFi Cash, can attract a significant number of users and capital without relying heavily on incentives. In addition, we recognize that there are ongoing efforts to create a more unified liquidity experience on Scroll, which is expected to make things easier for both users and builders while avoiding too much fragmentation. In particular, payments, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) stand out as verticals with the clearest product-market fit and should be prioritized in this area.
One of the proposals currently up for vote is the Treasury Management, where delegates are asked to choose a service provider. The results will be known in September once voting concludes, but this already reflects an important step in the broader strategy: diversifying the treasury to strengthen long-term sustainability and reduce potential sell pressure on SCR by converting part of the holdings into stablecoins.
Looking further ahead, intent-based and cross-chain systems may reduce the need for liquidity to sit directly on Scroll. But for now, we still need to invest in the basic infrastructure, support useful apps, and make sure SCR is being used in meaningful ways.
3. User Acquisition and Retention
Users are essential, but acquisition without real product utility doesnât last. Scrollâs post-airdrop drop-off made that clear. Thatâs why we believe user growth should be tied to real productâmarket fit and sustained liquidity, while also recognizing that strong acquisition and retention strategies can create value at any stage.
Weâll support UX improvements, onboarding flows, educational tools, and user-facing apps with credible productâmarket fit. We also see growing potential in community-led content creation, where users contribute tutorials, explainers, and narratives that help onboard others - shifting the focus from incentivizing people to join, to empowering them to contribute.
4. Community Building and Local Ecosystems
Scrollâs long-term adoption depends on grassroots growth. But meetups alone arenât enough. We need regional leaders who take ownership, build trust, and create meaningful pipelines into the ecosystem. Our focus should stay narrow rather than spread too thin, with early concentration on regions like Malaysia, Kenya, and Nigeria where founder pipelines are already developing.
That said, this work is already being led by Scrollâs Community Council. Our role in the EGC will therefore focus on supporting their efforts by sharing learnings, co-designing top-of-funnel programs, and ensuring that regional funnels are connected to builder pipelines and product traction.
How We Use This Guidance
The EGC will use these focus areas to guide decisions on current and future growth proposals. When evaluating an idea, we will look for strong alignment with these priorities and clear potential to deliver measurable growth outcomes for the ecosystem.
We will also be clear about what we wonât support. This includes activities that donât create long-term value for the ecosystem, such as pure token speculation, short-term farming programs, or other initiatives with no sustainable growth impact. Having this defined helps set expectations and gives us a reference point when developing eligibility for downstream programs.
This direction will evolve over time. We will revisit it regularly to ensure it reflects both our long-term growth vision and emerging opportunities. By staying focused while remaining adaptable, we can ensure that Scroll grows in ways that stay true to our values and create lasting impact.
The full document including a backup section with additional context, as well as a list of sources can be found here.
