Interview with Scroll Co-founder Haichen: The Mainnet launch is a new starting point, follow real-world applications

As a highly followed open-source Layer 2 solution led by Asian entrepreneurs, Scroll officially launched its Mainnet in October 2023 after two years of intensive development and one year of testing. As of October 27, the total locked value on the Scroll chain has exceeded 19.3 million USD, with over 147,000 Mainnet wallet addresses and more than 860,000 verified transactions.

Recently, Scroll hosted the ETH Hong Kong event at Cyberport in Hong Kong, which is the first large-scale event organized by the Ethereum community in Hong Kong. During the event, Scroll co-founder Haichen Shen was interviewed, sharing the development history and future plans of Scroll.

Haichen worked for many years at Amazon Web Services, mainly focusing on AI compiler-related work. He was introduced to zero-knowledge proof technology while participating in Ethereum community events and believes this is a highly promising field that can be used to develop actual products and systems, ultimately achieving Ethereum scalability, accommodating more transactions and reducing user fees.

When talking about why they chose to hold the Ethereum conference in Hong Kong, Haichen stated that they noticed that although Hong Kong has a strong business atmosphere, the Ethereum community is relatively weak. Through this event, they hope to involve more Hong Kong students and Ethereum community developers from the Asia-Pacific region, to understand the latest developments in Ethereum and to re-expand the Ethereum community in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region.

This hackathon attracted nearly 100 projects, primarily focused on providing service infrastructure for Ethereum or Layer 2, as well as enhancing user experience. Ultimately, 16 projects will be selected to enter the final round of competition, and the winners will receive rewards.

Regarding the significance of Scroll's official launch of the zkEVM Mainnet, Haichen believes it is an important achievement and a new starting point. The team spent about two and a half years completing the development of infrastructure components, including zkEVM circuits and block generation sequencers. In the last few months, they focused on security optimizations and invited independent external organizations to conduct a comprehensive audit.

One week after the Mainnet launch, the ecological development of Scroll is basically in line with expectations. Approximately 15 million USD has entered the Scroll chain, and some DeFi applications have begun to generate transactions on-chain. Surprisingly, the growth rate of contract deployments has exceeded the growth of TVL, indicating that more active developers are developing on Scroll, and we may see more innovative applications in the future.

Regarding the reasons for choosing a zkRollup solution based on zkEVM, Haichen explained that zk technology can provide users with higher security and a better user experience. Compared to Optimistic Rollup, zkRollup ensures security by actively submitting proofs and offers shorter final confirmation times.

Scroll aims for a high degree of compatibility with the Ethereum EVM in its technical implementation. They write zero-knowledge proof circuits in a manner closest to EVM, providing corresponding zk circuit components for each EVM instruction to prove its correct execution. Currently, the number of precompiled contracts supported by Scroll is the largest in zkRollup.

In terms of ecological development, Scroll will initially focus on supporting infrastructure services such as RPC, indexing, cross-chain bridges, and oracles. Subsequently, there will be a wave of DeFi application deployments. In the long term, Scroll plans to build an open and neutral platform that treats all types of developers equally. They will pay special attention to real-world application projects, such as stablecoin payments and AA wallet projects, as well as public goods projects that are beneficial for ecological development.

Haichen revealed that Scroll will launch incentive programs for developers in the future, which may adopt an NFT approach to encourage developers to deploy contracts on Scroll.

Regarding the competition and development of zkEVM and the L2 track, Haichen believes that the entire Layer 2 ecosystem competition is still in its early stages. This year, more attention has turned to zkRollup solutions. Future issues that need to be addressed include increasing the level of trustlessness in Layer 2, enhancing security guarantees, and developing new applications to achieve faster information exchange between Layer 1 and Layer 2. He emphasized that the entire market is not a zero-sum game, but a field that can continuously expand.