Protocol Researcher

Role Overview

We are looking for a protocol researcher to join our team. Building a truly secure, scalable, and decentralized zero-knowledge rollup requires considerable research work, including solving many open problems around protocol and mechanism design.

Your day-to-day work as a protocol researcher at Scroll will involve conducting research on Ethereum and layer 2 design. This research will need to cover a very large scope including rollup economics, state growth, EVM, MEV, PBS, AA, Layer 3, etc.

We are looking for someone with a deep understanding of protocol research as well as basic coding ability. The ideal candidate will also be a strong communicator and writer, with an ability to output high quality content and to translate research ideas into terms that engineers can easily understand and implement.

Responsibilities

• Survey existing layer 2 and Ethereum protocols through code and papers
• Propose new designs and optimizations for our layer 2 ptotocol.
• Propose new designs and optimizations for Ethereum (i.e. propose layer 2 related EIPs)
• Explore new research directions (i.e. EVM, MEV, PBS, AA, Layer 3, etc)
• Output high quality content (i.e. talk, blog post, research post)
• Keep the engineering team up to date with the latest ideas in protocol research
• Establish collaborations with universities and external researchers to solve open problems

Requirements

• Strong interest in decentralized system and open source collaboration
• Familiarity with layer 2 and Ethereum infrastructure
• Ability to read and write academic papers, understand and propose EIPs
• Ability to present and explain cutting-edge crypto research to engineers clearly
• Experience in blockchain infrastructure development or cryptography preferred
• Fluency in Golang, Rust, C++, or similar languages. We work primarily in Golang and Rust, but prior experience is not mandatory

Culture & Perks

Scroll is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need, please let us know and we'll do our best to accommodate.

Benefits:

• Work from anywhere with flexible hours
• Generous paid time off
• Home office set up
• Annual growth budget
• Coworking membership allowance
• Private healthcare in selected countries
• Competitive salary package

About Us

Scroll is an EVM-equivalent zkRollup to scale Ethereum. Technically speaking, Scroll is built upon two major pieces. The core piece is the zkEVM, which is used to prove the correctness of EVM execution in Layer 2. We have been building it in the open with the Privacy and Scaling Explorations group at the Ethereum Foundation for over a year. But to turn the zkEVM into a full zkRollup on the Ethereum, we also need to build a complete L2 architecture around it.