Scroll Co-founder Haichen: The launch of the Mainnet is a new starting point, with a focus on real-world applications.

As an open-source Layer2 solution led by Asian entrepreneurs, Scroll has always received high attention from the community. After two years of intensive development and one year of testing, Scroll produced its genesis block at 2 PM on October 10, 2023, and officially announced the launch of its Mainnet on October 17.

As of October 27, the total locked value on the Scroll chain has exceeded $19.3 million. The number of Mainnet wallet addresses has surpassed 147,000, with a total verified transaction volume exceeding 860,000. From October 20 to 26, the average daily transaction volume was close to 80,000, with the highest single-day transaction volume occurring on October 22, reaching 101,375.

Recently, Scroll co-hosted the ETH Hong Kong event with the Web3 investment firm Newman Group at Hong Kong Cyberport, marking the first event organized by the Ethereum community in Hong Kong. During the event, we had the privilege of interviewing Scroll co-founder Haichen Shen, and below is a summary of the interview.

Technical Features and Advantages of Scroll

Haichen stated that Scroll's choice of the zkEVM-based zkRollup solution is mainly based on two considerations:

First, zk technology provides users with stronger security guarantees. Compared to Optimistic Rollup, zkRollup actively submits proofs and does not need to wait for a challenge period, allowing for faster confirmation of transaction finality.

Secondly, Scroll places a high emphasis on EVM equivalence. This allows developers to migrate development tools from Ethereum to Layer 2 without modifying code or installing new plugins. This not only simplifies the development process but also reduces the potential risk of bugs.

In terms of technical implementation, Scroll strives for maximum compatibility with the Ethereum EVM. Each EVM instruction has a corresponding zk circuit component to prove its correct execution. Currently, the number of precompiled contracts supported by Scroll is leading in zkRollup, providing developers with a more complete user experience.

In addition, Scroll's Sequencer is implemented based on Go-Ethereum, ensuring high compatibility with Ethereum's native APIs.

Ecological Development and Future Plans

One week after the Mainnet launch, the ecological development of Scroll basically meets expectations. Assets worth about 15 million USD have entered the Scroll chain, and multiple DeFi applications have begun to generate transactions on-chain. It is worth noting that the growth in the number of contract deployments has even outpaced the growth of TVL, which suggests that more innovative applications may emerge on Scroll in the future.

For ecological construction, Scroll has adopted a phased strategy:

1. The initial focus will be on supporting infrastructure services, including RPC, indexing, cross-chain bridges, and oracles.
2. Subsequently, a wave of DeFi application deployments will follow.
3. The long-term goal is to build an open and neutral platform to provide equal support for various developers.

Haichen emphasized that Scroll will focus more on real-world applications, such as stablecoin payments and AA wallet projects. At the same time, it will also prioritize supporting public goods projects that benefit the entire ecosystem, such as developer tools.

In the future, Scroll plans to launch incentive programs for developers, which may adopt NFTs to encourage more developers to deploy contracts on Scroll.

Thoughts on Layer 2 Ecosystem

Haichen believes that the competition in the entire Layer 2 ecosystem has just begun. This year, the market's focus has shifted from Optimistic Rollup to zkRollup, but zkRollup still has some issues that need to be resolved.

The primary task is to enhance the decentralization of Layer 2, making it no longer reliant on a single project for technical support, but rather able to attract more developers to participate. At the same time, it is necessary to further enhance security to boost user confidence.

Haichen emphasized that the Layer 2 market is not a zero-sum game, but rather an ecosystem that can continually expand. In the future, there is still a lot of room to develop new applications to achieve faster information exchange between Layer 1 and Layer 2.

Finally, Haichen calls for more developers to join the zkRollup ecosystem, to create more interesting and innovative projects, and to jointly promote the development of the entire industry.