Scrolls alone do not unlock the true potential of blockchain.

Comment by: Adrian Brink, Co-Founder of Anoma

They have become a solution to Ethereum's expansion problems. As the ecosystem continues to expand, however, challenges posed by stacks — including ongoing state and liquidity sharing and the inability to create a unified user experience — are becoming critical obstacles to Ethereum's evolution.

Abstractions alone do not unlock any fundamental new functionality or capabilities for developers. Instead of continuing to innovate on the fringes, we need new approaches to blockchain architecture to unlock Ethereum's true potential.

Risks of packaging disintegration

Most coils are basically copies of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) or minor modifications. When you reduce transaction fees by removing computation from the main chain, you don't see the need to scale new use cases or innovation. The same is true for alternative virtual machines (altVMs), as they provide developers with new programming language options. However, altVMs do not bring fundamentally new functionality to the ecosystem. Aggregate use has been dominated primarily by point farming programs, lacking practical applications to advance the field.

Package expansion is a fragmented, fragmented, and fluid landscape that limits user and developer experience and adoption. To unlock innovation, we need new approaches to app development. We need better state and data management approaches to enable true scale.

The real test of scalability lies in data and territory.

Rolls aren't the only perfect size solution. It would be more accurate to describe them as an execution-sharding solution. Computation is not a complex problem – the complex problem is balancing state and data access and distribution. Scrolls still rely on Ethereum for data availability and security. While this improves transaction processes, it does little to increase Ethereum's base layer capacity in the long run.

Although the Zero Knowledge (ZK) package offers significant stealth advancements and is taking us out of chaining everything. The ecosystem doesn't require 200 different copies or minor adjustments of EVM, each decentralized exchange (DEX).

Rollups are currently insufficient to address the real bottleneck in blockchain scalability: data storage and state management. We need solutions that can scale data and context.

Plasma and Intents unlock true scale and creativity.

Currently, the only viable solution for real expansion is plasma-like structures. Plasma eliminates the dependency on a single data availability layer. It enables a world where valuable data and computing can be stored off-chain – for example, with users' edge devices. The amount of data required to post a packet to the main chain is proportional to the amount of usage available, which is not a true scaling solution. With Plasma, we can post a constant amount of data to the main chain regardless of user flow.

Moderation is not the only challenge. We also need to fuel innovation at the application layer. New approaches to blockchain architecture and new paradigms for application development are essential. That's where embedded architecture comes into play.

Intents provide a new paradigm for users to build decentralized applications that decompress the complexity of blockchain infrastructure. Intents are only concerned with the “what” and less concerned with the “how”, asking users to specify what they want to achieve without prescribing the intermediate steps required.

Building DApps on an intent-centric operating system allows developers to view status and liquidity from anywhere in the Ethereum ecosystem (including Layer 2) and use the Ethereum main chain (or any Layer 2) as a settlement layer. The overall goals are to facilitate the common ordering of Ethereum coils, defragment states across chains, and allow developers to treat the entire multichain landscape as a unified development environment.

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Combining the scalability of plasma-like approaches with the advantages of in-house systems opens up new functionality and ends issues of packaging, stagnation and fragmentation.

Unlocking the true potential of blockchain with awareness

The blockchain space should go beyond the current infrastructure focus to provide real service by building user-friendly applications. Scrolls are essential to Ethereum's evolution, but ideas can help them find a new wave of innovation. It is time to ask whether we are building technology that solves real problems, or simply creating complex systems, ultimately serving the same limited functions.

With new approaches like Intent Machines, coupled with the scalability of Plasma, we can begin to unlock a new style of innovation for developers and a better experience for users, aligning the space more with Web2 usability. This evolution benefits the scrolls and the space as a whole.

Scrolls, in the right direction, have resulted in a more complex Web3 experience. To unlock the potential of blockchain, we need to be bolder in our innovations and focus more on solving fundamental issues. Only then can we hope to realize the ultimate vision of blockchain technology, bringing sovereignty and resilience to the systems we rely on every day.

Adrian Brink co-founded Anoma, a distributed operating system for application-oriented applications. He also co-founded Cryptium Labs, a PoS infrastructure operator, and worked as a principal protocol engineer on the Cosmos stack at Tendermint. Adrian currently serves on the board of the Anoma Foundation.

This article is not intended for general information purposes and should not be construed as legal or investment advice. The views, ideas and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.