Scroll, the Layer 2 Ethereum network has announced a successful raise of $50 million, with reports indicating that the company could now be worth $1.8 billion. Investors including Polychain Capital, Sequoia China, Bain Capital Crypto, Moore Capital Management, Variant Fund, Newman Capital, IOSG Venture, A&T Capital and Oiming Ventures were the leading contributors.
After two successful rounds of fundraising, the total amount the company has brought in is $83 million. The money raised will be put toward hiring more people, creating more products, deploying the mainnet and growing the Scroll ecosystem.
Zero-Knowledge technology and why Scroll stands out
With the support of its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM), Scroll is able to conduct transactions independently of Ethereum on its own network. It then relays the processed data back to the Ethereum network for confirmation, thereby facilitating faster transactions at cheaper processing fees. It is important to note that Scroll is only one of many Ethereum scaling networks that employ zk-rollups technology. The company asserts, however, that its community orientation, emphasis on security and commitment to full decentralisation give it an edge.
From its inception in 2021, Scroll has been working toward its mission of bringing a billion people to Ethereum. The firm will use some of its fresh capital to increase its staff size from 60 to about 100 in the near future. The platform exited the pre-alpha testnet phase last week when it released its zkEVM on the Goeli testnet. To date, 16 million transactions have been processed through Scroll, and the service has been used by one million different addresses.
Zk-rollups have been widely used by Ethereum L2 platforms due to the efficiency they bring in lowering transaction costs and raising transaction throughput. Considering how congested the Ethereum Network can get, this is crucial. Companies like polygon and StarkWare are pioneers in this field. In the meantime, Scroll plans to release its mainnet within the next four months.