Scroll co-founder Haichen Shen: The launch of the Mainnet is a new beginning, and ecological development focuses more on real-world applications.

Scroll, as an open-source Layer 2 solution led by Asian entrepreneurs, has attracted significant 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.

According to the data, as of October 27, the total locked value on the Scroll chain (TVL) has exceeded 19.3 million USD. The number of Mainnet wallet addresses has surpassed 147,000, with a total of over 860,000 verified transactions. From October 20 to 26, the average daily transaction volume approached 80,000, with the highest single-day transaction volume being 101,375 on October 22.

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

Haichen introduced that he has worked for many years at Amazon Web Services(AWS), mainly engaged in AI compiler-related work. Later, he was exposed to zero-knowledge proof technology while participating in Ethereum community activities and believes this is a highly promising field that can be used to develop practical products and systems, ultimately achieving Ethereum scaling to accommodate more transactions and reduce user fees.

When discussing why the Ethereum conference is being held in Hong Kong, Haichen stated that they realized that although Hong Kong has a strong business atmosphere, the Ethereum community is relatively small. Through this event, they can attract Hong Kong students and Ethereum community developers from the Asia-Pacific region to participate, learn about the latest developments in Ethereum, and help expand the Ethereum community to Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region, which is of great significance for the expansion of the developer ecosystem in the entire region.

Regarding the launch of the Scroll Mainnet, Haichen believes that this marks a new beginning. After long-term development and testing, Scroll has completed the development of infrastructure components including zkEVM circuits and the sequencer for generating blocks. In the months leading up to the launch, the team focused on various security optimizations and invited independent external organizations to conduct code audits.

One week after the Mainnet launch, the ecological development of Scroll is basically in line with expectations. Approximately $15 million has entered the Scroll chain, and some DeFi applications have already generated transactions on the platform. Notably, the growth rate of contract deployments has surpassed the growth of TVL, which is seen as a healthy signal, indicating that more innovative applications may be deployed on Scroll in the future.

In terms of technology selection, Scroll has chosen a zkRollup solution based on zkEVM and emphasizes the importance of EVM equivalence. Haichen explained that zk technology can provide users with stronger security guarantees while shortening finality times. EVM equivalence allows users and developers to have a better user experience by directly using developer tools on Ethereum without the need to install additional plugins.

Scroll aims for high compatibility with the Ethereum EVM in its technical implementation. Each EVM instruction has a corresponding zk circuit component to prove its correct execution. In addition, Scroll supports multiple precompiled contracts to provide developers with a more complete user experience. In terms of sequencers, Scroll has made targeted adjustments based on Go-Ethereum to ensure high compatibility with Ethereum's native API.

Regarding the ecological development plan, Haichen stated that Scroll will first focus on infrastructure service support, such as RPC, indexing, cross-chain bridges, and oracles. This will be followed by a wave of DeFi application deployments. In the long term, Scroll aims to build an open and neutral platform that treats projects of all sizes equally. Areas of particular interest include real-world applications, such as stablecoin payments and AA wallet projects, as well as public goods projects that benefit the entire ecosystem.

Haichen revealed that Scroll plans to launch an incentive program for developers, which may use NFTs to encourage developers to deploy contracts on Scroll.

Looking back on the entrepreneurial journey, Haichen stated that Scroll had relatively smooth early financing, allowing the team to focus on technology development. The main challenges came from the technical level, especially encountering many unexpected issues during the construction of zkEVM. Through internal discussions and collaboration with open-source communities like the Ethereum Foundation's privacy and scalability exploration group (, the Scroll team gradually resolved these challenges and ultimately achieved the expected performance level through multiple rounds of code restructuring and optimization.

Regarding the competition and development of the Layer 2 track, Haichen believes that the entire ecosystem is still in its early stages. This year, zk Rollup solutions have begun to receive more attention, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed, such as increasing the level of decentralization and enhancing security guarantees. He emphasized that the Layer 2 market is not a zero-sum game, but rather a market that can continue to expand. In the future, more developers need to create innovative projects on zk Rollup to further promote fast information interaction between Layer 1 and Layer 2.

![Exclusive Interview with Scroll Co-founder Haichen: The launch of the Mainnet is a new beginning, with a greater focus on real-world applications])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-d3f78349bf2463e7ecc8cb1e2a01036e.webp(