[BIP-306] Proposal to deploy Balancer on Scroll

Summary

Scroll is live on the Goerli Testnet today and is expected to launch on Mainnet in early August this year. We view Balancer’s composable liquidity products as critical building blocks of decentralized finance and we want to work with you to further expand your growth on Scroll into the future.

If approved, Balancer contributors will launch on Scroll as soon as possible after our Mainnet launch. This would add Scroll to the list of networks approved as new deployments by governance.

Background

About Scroll

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Scroll_ZKP
Discord: https://discord.gg/scroll
Forum: https://community.scroll.io/

Scroll is an L2 scaling solution that is pushing the development of an Ethereum-equivalent zkEVM. Our main priorities are to implement a bytecode-level compatible zkEVM with sound zero knowledge proofs, work on related initiatives to coordinate the development of Layer 1 and zkEVM, and reach a community standard to improve Ethereum for the end game. Security is of the highest priority for us and our current EVM implementation is well-specified and robust. Our in-house security team also operates in close conjunction with the highest-caliber auditors in the industry.

Scroll is built on a completely open source basis. This includes the ZK circuits, the proving system, and the verifier smart contract. Code security is also closely monitored by community developers from projects such as Zcash, 0xPARC, Privacy and Scaling Explorations, and Filecoin.

Today, Scroll is currently live on the Goerli Testnet and contracts can be deployed permissionlessly by anyone anywhere. We maintain a trustless Layer 1 <> Layer 2 bridge that supports arbitrary message delivery. The bridge is part of the rollup mechanism, verified by the smart contract and the zkEVM, which is more secure than classical relayer-based bridges.

Goals

We propose for Balancer to deploy on Scroll as early as possible (pending Scroll’s Mainnet launch). The Scroll Foundation will actively ensure that early dApp deployments to Scroll will run sustainably after launch.

On our side, there is growing interest from Lending Protocols (including Aave) and Liquid Staking Protocols such as Lido and Rocket Pool for Balancer to deploy on Scroll. These protocols have shown interest in expanding their existing efforts with Balancer onto Scroll, which signals to us that the deployment of Balancer on Scroll is a high-priority task. We want to enable opportunities for Balancer to solidify a strong position in the Scroll ecosystem early on to bring value to both of our communities.

Current areas where we see Balancer playing a key role include:

  • Supporting Liquid staking derivative projects seed liquidity for their respective assets on Scroll
  • Utilizing Cross-chain gauge boosts to leverage Aura Finance following LayerZero’s deployment on Scroll

We will also actively discover areas within our ecosystem where Balancer’s offerings will find fit, and make those connections accordingly with the DAO.

Specification

If approved, Balancer contributors will launch on Scroll as soon as possible after our Mainnet launch. This would add Scroll to the list of networks approved as new deployments by governance.

9 Likes

Dear Balancer Community, I’m Robert from the Partnerships team at Scroll and we’re reaching out to you to propose the deployment of Balancer on Scroll. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the proposal, please reach out to us or comment!

5 Likes

This is a great proposal, brother. Welcome to the Balancer forum!

6 Likes

I think this is a great idea and I am very much in favor of this deployment.

But it does not seem that Layer Zero is deployed on Scroll and with the launch of the new gauges maybe we have to wait for a deployment of LZ on Scroll. Maybe someone more technical can bring us information about this.

1 Like

We believe it is a good idea to have Balancer on Scroll. With AAVE already in the testnet, the initial steps seem to be in place.

Can you elaborate further on this part? ‘The Scroll Foundation will actively ensure that early dApp deployments to Scroll will run sustainably after launch.’

Do you also have a rough timeline for the Layer Zero deployment on Scroll?

1 Like

Correct, Layer Zero isn’t officially deployed as Scroll mainnet is not currently live. However, they are working on deploying to Scroll Alpha Testnet (Goerli).

2 Likes

Note that as mentioned on this RFC [RFC] - Deploy Balancer on Linea

We are unable to deploy and/or manage deployments on chains where gnosis safe is not setup and working in a reasonably well supported way.

This currently has us blocked on Sepolia. It would be helpful to include confirmation that gnosis safe is available and a link to where to find it if not at the normal URL as part of the specification when bringing this to a BIP.

In the meantime, it would save us time if the topic started with [RFC]. We scan through all the BIP-XXX’s every week and try to assess if they are ready for snapshot/take that as a signal that the OP thinks they are.

At the moment, the Gnosis Safe contracts have been deployed on Scroll’s Alpha Testnet (Goerli) and the contracts can be tracked here: Safe Smart Contract Deployments. Safe will also be deployed as soon as Scroll launches on Mainnet.

1 Like

Any word on UI/API deployment and/or will this be in place with mainnet deployment?

This will be in place with the mainnet deployment. For our Goerli and Sepolia Testnets (est June), Protofire (https://protofire.io/) is working with our team to deploy the Safe UI.

To further elaborate on that part; Scroll will launch with crucial infrastructure ready on Mainnet to ensure dApps such as Balancer don’t have missing dependencies (oracles, block explorers, indexers, third party rpcs, gnosis safe multisig, and cross-chain bridging solutions).

Layer Zero is in the process of deploying to Scroll Alpha Testnet (Goerli) and will deploy on Mainnet pending our launch in August this year.

2 Likes

fyi this will go to vote this week at the proposer’s request.

From what I’ve heard Scroll does seem like a promising new network. The issue is governance has already approved avalanche, zkEVM, zkSync, and Base as new deployments. None of these deployments are live yet. It’s not a huge job to put Balancer on a new network but we have to be mindful of our limited contributor resources. Outside of Gnosis Chain we haven’t had a new network in a very long time so it’s an open question how successful these are going to be. If we get 2-3 of these done and see very little traction that is going to sour the appetite for continuing down the path of aggressively deploying everywhere.

While this would only be a signaling vote it’s important that Balancer contributors respect the desires of the community. This is why I suggested waiting until we complete some of these pending deployments and observe the results which could inform our future strategy.

3 Likes

Thanks for sharing your concerns! We greatly respect the decisions made by the community and understand the importance of carefully managing contributor resources. We’re fully committed to driving TVL and fostering increased usage of Balancer on Scroll and Ethereum at large.
We’re also firmly confident that due to our bytecode-compatibility, deployment resources will be minimal and that the process should run smoothly.
If, however, the community feels strongly that we should push this decision out, we are more than happy to shift this to an RFC and submit a deployment proposal when the team has more bandwidth.

2 Likes

I don’t see an issue with going to vote this week. We went ahead and queued it up. If there is an issue, let us know: https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0xb46bbb3bcbad604816d525b9f6a55cbd00833e423515c3f35012be932a45f53d

1 Like