Jessy, Golden Finance

The airdrop of Ethereum's second-layer Scroll is long overdue. On October 22, Scroll will issue airdrops to users who are active on the chain and meet the requirements. On October 10, Scroll's token SCR was listed on Binance's Launchpool.

Currently, the snapshot time of Scroll airdrop is set on October 19th. It will be listed on Lauchpool first and then airdropped. Few projects operate in this way. On the other hand, the tokens issued by the airdrop are 5.5%, while the tokens issued by Lauchpool account for 7%.

Scroll's above actions have caused dissatisfaction among community members. The money-grabbing party members who work hard to complete tasks and bring data to the project seem to be unable to match the traffic brought to the project by the exchange.

The dilemma behind this is that the market is currently in chaos, there are many Ethereum Layer 2 projects, and the popularity is low, so it is difficult to break through the siege. Exchanges control the traffic, and projects give more benefits to exchanges and their users. For Scroll, which came late, obtaining the traffic and exposure of exchanges seems to be the only option.

Born at the wrong time

The distribution rules of this airdrop have aroused doubts among community members, mainly because the project party allocated 7% of the token shares to Binance Launchpool, and Binance's coin listing time was earlier than the airdrop allocation.

In response to the above doubts, Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng wrote: For Scroll, Binance is not just a listing platform, it is the best channel for Scroll to reach global distribution. It will open deposit and withdrawal channels and help Scroll develop to the next stage, especially in emerging markets. Scroll ETH deposit and withdrawal functions on Binance are now online, and Binance will soon directly support stablecoins on Scroll. Scroll will become the first zkRollup to receive such support.

Obviously, the most obvious purpose of Scroll's move is to expand the market through Binance. Scroll, which is late to the party, is currently facing a market that has already been basically segmented. According to statistics, there are more than 150 Layer2s that have been launched or are about to be launched.

Currently, there are two different tracks for the Ethereum expansion Rollup program, Op Rollup and Zk Rollup. Their Rollup execution principles are similar, and the main difference lies in the transaction verification process.

Scroll is a Layer2 project of the Zk Rollup route. The difference between the two routes is that in the short term, Op Rollup has lower cost and technical barriers, and developers can quickly get started, so it is more in line with the current situation and easier to solve current problems; ZK Rollup has a higher development threshold and is more suitable for areas that have an extreme pursuit of security and privacy. In the long run, with the continuous development of ZK-related technologies, the limitations of ZK Rollup may be broken.

Simply put, in the short term, OP Rollup is easier to implement. As early as 2022 and early 2023, the two leading Op Rollup projects, Optimism and Arbitrum, have already launched their mainnets and issued tokens. Basically, the Layer2 of several well-known Op Rollup lines have completed their mainnet launches and issued tokens in 2023.

In itself, Zk Rollup is more difficult to implement technically than OP Rollup. Therefore, it takes more time for research and development, and the actual implementation of the project is slower than that of OP series projects. It was not until this year that ZK series projects began to issue coins one after another.

Scroll, which will only issue its token in October 2024, is actually facing a Layer2 market that has already been almost divided. The greater crisis at this time comes from the fact that the Ethereum ecosystem itself is also declining, there are too many Layer2s, and the fragmentation and combination problems between Layer2s cannot be solved. All these are threatening the long-term development of the Layer2 track.

At present, the transfer fee of Ethereum main network has hit a record low many times. Ethereum, which originally entered deflation after the Cancun upgrade, has now entered inflation. It must be said that this situation is also closely related to the fact that Ethereum's numerous Layer2s have taken away Ethereum's traffic. At present, the relationship between Ethereum and many Layer2s is actually a bit awkward and delicate. Layer2s were born to expand Ethereum, and the current excessive number of Layer2s has also directly led to the decline of Ethereum main network.

Traffic flow strategy cannot last long

Faced with such a fiercely competitive and chaotic market, the latecomer Scroll has its own way of working hard. The fact that it was finally listed on Binance is one aspect of its efforts and also a proof of its success.

As of October 11, according to Defilama data, in the overall public chain TVL ranking, Arbitrum ranked fifth, Base ranked sixth, and Scroll ranked eleventh. Scroll's TVL volume also ranks third in Ethereum Layer 2.

Scroll released the Scroll Marks user points statistics rules on May 15, 2024, and Scroll's data began to soar from May. TVL ushered in a surge, thanks to the anticipation of airdrops.

In the operation of airdrop points, Scroll cooperates with multiple projects, that is, you can get airdrop points from multiple projects through a set of Lego airdrop operations. Specifically, it is the cooperation of five projects: Stone+Scroll+Eigen+Symbiotic+Pencils. You only need to cross-chain Stone tokens to other projects multiple times to get airdrop points from multiple projects.

At present, Scroll's TVL is brought up by Restaking, thanks to such cooperation. Among the tokens with TVL locked, Stone tokens have reached 313 million US dollars, ranking first.

This is different from other Layer2 TVL structures that are mainly ETH, WETH, WBTC, and stablecoins. Stone assets are different from ETH, WETH, WBTC, and stablecoins. They have low liquidity and can only be regarded as a "facade decoration" to increase TVL. In this way, Scroll's TVL is actually built by stacking points to siphon Restaking assets.

Such a TVL volume is definitely unsustainable. So how will Scroll develop next?

The problems faced by Scroll are actually the common problems faced by the Layer2 track. Currently, there are too many Layer2s, the project technologies are highly homogenized, and the liquidity is fragmented. Perhaps, there should not be a competitive relationship between projects.

Vitalik once tweeted: We need an open decentralized (no operator, no management) protocol for quickly transferring assets from one L2 to another L2, and integrate it into the default sending interface of the wallet. But before getting too obsessed with any fancy toys, do the basic work first. Our biggest user experience problem is that the L2 world does not feel "like a unified Ethereum" enough. Things that are easy to do on L1 are difficult across L2, such as token transfers, ENS, smart contract wallet key changes, and other functions.

Justin Drake, research analyst at the Ethereum Foundation, also acknowledged that the fragmentation of liquidity and composability across Rollups (and more generally across L2, including validation) is a problem. "However, this is only a temporary transition, and we are in the adolescent stage of a Rollup-centric roadmap to regain universal synchronous composability across Rollups."

Perhaps, the problem of liquidity fragmentation of Ethereum Layer2 is a temporary problem, and there are currently some projects working to solve this problem.

For Scroll, the current traffic strategy is definitely not sustainable. If it can do something to solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation, it may be able to stand out and have the last laugh.

After all, Vitalik also pointed out that ZK technology will be the end of Ethereum Layer2.