Scroll is pioneering a vision of the Open Economy. A fully decentralized ecosystem where innovation thrives, collaboration flourishes, and meaningful solutions emerge for both global and local communities. At its core, it's a zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) rollup that scales Ethereum while maintaining its foundational principles of decentralization and censorship resistance.

Unlike other scaling solutions that compromise on security or decentralization, this approach maintains complete compatibility with Ethereum while dramatically improving transaction throughput and reducing costs. This means developers can deploy their existing Ethereum applications without any modifications, enjoying the benefits of faster transactions and lower fees.

The Three-Layer Architecture

The robust infrastructure is built on three interconnected layers:

Settlement Layer (Ethereum) The foundation of trust where security is anchored. This layer provides data availability, verifies validity proofs, and enables seamless asset transfers between Ethereum and the rollup through bridge and rollup contracts.

Sequencing Layer The operational heart, containing:

• Execution Node: Processes transactions from both users and Ethereum bridge interactions, producing L2 blocks

• Rollup Node: Batches transactions, posts data to Ethereum for availability, and submits validity proofs for finalization

Proving Layer The innovation engine that ensures transaction correctness through:

• A distributed pool of provers generating zkEVM validity proofs

• A coordinator orchestrating proving tasks and relaying proofs back to Ethereum

The Challenge: Complex Proof Generation at Scale

Zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic marvels that allow the system to prove the correctness of thousands of transactions without revealing their details. However, generating these proofs presents significant challenges:

The Three-Stage Proving Pipeline

Proofs are generated through a sophisticated three-step process:

1. Chunk Proofs: Prove collections of ordered transaction traces across multiple blocks

2. Batch Proofs: Combine and verify adjacent chunks

3. Bundle Proofs: Aggregate adjacent batches into final proofs verifiable on Ethereum

Each stage requires intensive computation, careful orchestration, and reliable infrastructure. Managing this complexity while maintaining decentralization and cost-efficiency is where traditional approaches fall short.

Fermah's Universal Proof Generation Solution

This is precisely where Fermah transforms the rollup's capabilities. As a universal proof market, it abstracts away the entire complexity of proof generation, providing cheap, fast, and decentralized computational power.

How It Powers the Proving Pipeline

Intelligent Orchestration The sophisticated coordination system automatically distributes proving tasks across its decentralized network, ensuring optimal resource utilization and minimal latency.

Universal Compatibility Unlike specialized proving solutions, Fermah can generate proofs for any proof system, chain, or virtual machine. This versatility ensures proving needs are met both today and as the ecosystem evolves.

Lean Mechanism Design Through efficient economic incentives and streamlined processes, it delivers cost-effective proof generation without compromising on speed or reliability.

The Integration: How It Works

The integration creates a seamless proof generation workflow:

1. Job Dispatch

When the network identifies the need for new proofs (chunks, batches, or bundles), the coordinator makes these tasks available to proof markets.

2. Job Capture

The Proving SDK continuously monitors the coordinator, automatically capturing new tasks and translating them into Fermah-compatible proof requests.

3.

Coordination

Fermah Core intelligently processes these requests, analyzing computational requirements and assigning tasks to the most suitable prover nodes in its decentralized network.

4. Prove

Selected prover nodes execute the intensive computations within secure Docker containers, generating the required proofs and returning them to Fermah Core.

5. Verify

The completed proofs flow back through the Proving SDK to the coordinator, which verifies and integrates them into the network, completing the cycle.

Enabling the SDK Revolution

The recent launch of the SDK represents a quantum leap in addressing Ethereum's fragmentation problem. This powerful toolkit enables developers to deploy their own ZK-rollup chains while maintaining full interoperability with the broader ecosystem.

Fermah plays a crucial role in this expansion by ensuring proof generation never becomes a bottleneck. Whether powering the mainnet or supporting new chains built with the SDK, projects can simply submit proof requests and receive reliable results—allowing developers to focus entirely on building innovative products rather than managing complex infrastructure.

The Developer Experience

With Fermah handling the proving infrastructure, developers enjoy:

• Simplified deployment: No need to understand or manage proof generation complexity

• Predictable costs: Transparent, competitive pricing for proof generation

• Reliable performance: Guaranteed proof delivery backed by a decentralized network

• Scalable architecture: Proof generation capacity that grows with demand

Looking Forward

Projects building the future of finance, gaming, social applications, and beyond now have the infrastructure they need to succeed without compromise.

The combination of zkEVM technology and decentralized proving infrastructure isn't just solving today's scalability challenges; it's laying the foundation for a more open, accessible, and innovative blockchain ecosystem.

Zero-knowledge proofs are the holy grail of blockchain privacy and scalability. They allow you to prove something is true without revealing the underlying data. From private transactions to scalable rollups, ZK technology promises to unlock the next phase of crypto innovation. But there's been a massive bottleneck: actually generating these proofs. The infrastructure requirements are complex, the costs are prohibitive, and the technical barriers have kept ZK tech locked away in research labs and well-funded teams.

Now Fermah, the universal proof marketplace connects proof demand with specialized proving infrastructure. By creating a market where projects can simply request proofs and get them delivered by optimized providers, Fermah eliminates the need for teams to build and manage their own proving infrastructure. The integration with Jolt—one of the most promising zkVMs in the space—demonstrates just how powerful this marketplace approach can be.

What Jolt Does - The zkVM Revolution

Jolt is a zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) for RISC-V that's designed to be the simplest, fastest, and most extensible of its kind. Built by a16z crypto, Jolt allows developers to write programs in high-level languages like Rust, C, or Go, then prove their execution with zero-knowledge proofs. No cryptography expertise required!

The technical breakthrough lies in its strategic use of sum-check protocols and lookup arguments (specifically Lasso). Instead of expensive group operations or extensive hashing, the zkVM commits to very small amounts of data and verifies it using basic field operations pushed to peak efficiency. This streamlined approach makes proof generation dramatically faster.

What sets this virtual machine apart is its focus on developer experience. It transforms zero-knowledge proofs from an esoteric cryptographic tool into something any programmer can use. You write normal code, the prover handles the complex math of proving its correct execution. With upcoming innovations like Twist and Shout on the horizon, performance will only get better.

How Fermah Powers the Magic

While Jolt provides the algorithmic breakthrough, Fermah provides the infrastructure magic that makes it work at scale. Operating as a universal proof marketplace, you simply send a proof request, and the network handles everything else to deliver your proof back fast, cheap, and reliably.

Here's how the marketplace amplifies Jolt's capabilities:

End-to-End Orchestration: The platform manages the entire proving pipeline from task assignment to final compression, eliminating the need for external orchestrators while adapting to different hardware configurations.

Hardware Optimization: Intelligent matchmaking optimizes for available hardware (GPUs, FPGAs) to ensure maximum efficiency for Jolt's algorithms.

Cost Engineering: Through mechanism design, the system continuously optimizes for cost efficiency, seeking out every possible gain to make ZK proofs economically viable.

Universal Compatibility: The marketplace supports any proof system, chain, or VM - meaning Jolt users get access to a broader ecosystem without vendor lock-in.

The result? Developers get Jolt's technical superiority without having to become DevOps experts in ZK infrastructure. Fermah handles the operational complexity so developers can focus on building.

The Future of Zero-Knowledge Technology

By combining Jolt's algorithmic innovations with Fermah's infrastructure expertise, we're seeing the emergence of a new paradigm where ZK proofs become as easy to use as any other cloud service.

For the broader crypto ecosystem, this means faster innovation cycles, lower barriers to entry for ZK-powered applications, and ultimately, the practical realization of privacy-preserving computation at scale. The "moon math" is finally becoming earthbound.