As we wind down for the holidays, I want to take a moment to thank you for allowing me to be part of this journey! It’s been inspiring to see the collaboration and progress that have come out of this effort.
In this post, I’ll recap the December 18th calls with Raza, Head of Growth, and Emily Lin, DevRel Team Lead, where they shared updates on Scroll’s 2025 strategy (recordings found here: #18 - Strategy & Proposal Review & #19 - Strategy & Proposal Review). Many of you may be wondering about the voting cycle which has shifted to facilitate this coordination with Labs as the DAO prepares for strategic deliberation. Information on what can be expected are covered in the update here.
Strategic Direction for Scroll in 2025
The following insights from Raza and Emily on the Labs team’s 2025 objectives for Scroll are intended to help the DAO focus its strategic deliberation. Rather than being tied to Labs’ goals, the DAO can explore opportunities to create complementary programs or act as a testing ground for new activations, regions, or verticals.
The core vision is to solidify Scroll’s role in building an open economy with the builders in the ecosystem by focusing on engineering innovations that enhance chain performance without compromising security.
Working toward this vision some strategic aims from the growth side include:
- Enhance chain performance:
- Achieve sub-cent transaction fees and 1,000 TPS, supported by ongoing advancements in the ZKVM, with a focus on further reducing finality times to enable faster settlements.
- Redirect resources to developers:
- Increased opportunities for developers: Open-source contributions, hackathons, and community activations.
- Ecosystem growth: Support 20 native dApps, engage 500 active developers, and build a founder-to-founder network to drive collaboration and real-world impact.
- Establish founder to founder network: Establish a network of 10 initial, highly-aligned founders and enable them to collaborate and assist each other and others in target countries. Founders will act as extensions of the team, collaborating with delegates by providing input but also by executing initiatives.
- Geographic focuses: Scroll is prioritizing growth in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In the first year, the focus will be within Malaysia, Kenya, South Korea, and Brazil while maintaining support for China. However, the DAO is encouraged to explore and validate opportunities in other regions, which can expand the Labs team’s efforts and provide input for future strategic planning. Additionally, if there are promising opportunities outside of these areas, they won’t be ignored.
- Native assets: Primarily focusing on assets tied to native applications to benefit ecosystem participants and leverage advantages for SCR holders.
- Strategic alliances: Partnering with value-aligned parties that can provide white-label solutions, expertise, and or who have useful licenses and regulatory frameworks beyond Scroll’s current scope.
At the same time, the DevRel team is focusing on Level Up, a one-stop shop for learning about building in web3 or Scroll specifically, as well as some other programs that will build founder to founder networks. DevRel serves as a funnel that aims to form a close alignment of with the growth and business development teams. The DevRel team focused on empowering developers not only through technical skills, but also with the skills needed to help them raise, demo, and overall increase their chances of success.
There will be more info coming on some of these new programs in early January.
Common theme: Founders
A shared theme from both discussions is that founders are the cornerstone of the strategy, playing a vital role in solving problems, generating value, and collaborating to help one another thrive.
The vision is to create an environment where founders join forces, support each other, and strengthen every protocol. This collaborative effort is intended to fuel innovation and foster success across the ecosystem.
Additional Topics:
Some additional topics of conversation can be found below:
Finality and Scroll’s Unique Positioning
Finality Overview:
Finality refers to the point at which a transaction on Layer 2 is considered permanent, undisputable, and cannot be rolled back. It is critical for ensuring the security and trustworthiness of transactions on the chain.
- Comparison of Rollups:
- Optimistic Rollups (OP): Relies on fraud proofs or a social mechanism called slashing to validate transactions, often taking days for finality.
- ZK Rollups (Scroll’s Approach): Uses mathematical proofs (validity proofs) to guarantee transaction correctness immediately after submission, offering faster and more reliable finality.
- Scroll’s Advantage:
- Security through efficiency: Scroll’s finality time is significantly faster (20 minutes to an hour) compared to other ZK rollups (12 hours to several days) and OP rollups (up to 3.5 days). This speed reduces risks such as rollbacks.
- Trust proofs, not people: Transactions on Scroll are secured by cryptographic validity proofs, not by reliance on Scroll’s team or centralized mechanisms.
- Pathways to Recovery: The chain’s end state is reliable, even in catastrophic scenarios. If Scroll or its team ceases operations, Ethereum’s ZK proofs can validate Scroll’s entire end state, enabling the chain to be restarted from its last state by any participant. This guarantees asset security and ensures continuity for users.
User Research Proposal
Steps discussed:
- Gather Lessons Learned:
- Aggregate insights from past builder support programs (e.g., hackathons, grants, investment initiatives) and existing research to create a functional, digestible resource.
- Focus on ecosystem development by leveraging existing knowledge rather than reinventing the wheel.
- Primary Research:
- Integrate a preliminary survey step to segment and target interview participants effectively.
- Conduct 45 interviews with program managers, builders, and top hackathon participants to understand their needs, situations, and outcomes.
- Include builders from ecosystems without VC funding to gain diverse perspectives.
- Use findings to develop builder personas, laying a foundation for ongoing, iterative research.
- Present Findings:
- Share insights with Scroll delegates, Labs team, and other stakeholders via live events and a detailed report.
- Conduct Workshop:
- Invite Delegates, Foundation, and Labs to define Scroll’s framework to builder support based on the findings.
- Final Output:
- Summarize research and strategic workshop outcomes in a formal document, potentially as a proposal.
- Ensure UR processes, outcomes, and data are publicly available to enable ongoing contributions from the ecosystem.
Happy holidays!