Scroll Co-founder Haichen Talks About Mainnet Launch and Ecological Development

As a highly regarded open-source Layer 2 solution, Scroll officially launched its Mainnet on October 17, 2023. As of October 27, the total value locked on the Scroll chain has exceeded $19.3 million, with over 147,000 Mainnet wallet addresses and a total of over 860,000 verified transactions.

Recently, Scroll co-hosted the ETH Hong Kong event at Cyberport in Hong Kong. During this period, Scroll co-founder Haichen Shen was interviewed, sharing the development history and future plans of Scroll.

Scroll Mainnet Launch: A New Starting Point

Haichen stated that the launch of the Mainnet is an important milestone in the development of Scroll and marks a new beginning. After two and a half years of development and a year of testing, Scroll has completed the development of infrastructure components including zkEVM circuits and block generation sequencers.

In the months leading up to the launch, the team focused on security optimizations and invited independent third-party organizations to audit all the code. Currently, users can bridge assets from Ethereum to Scroll and use various applications.

Haichen revealed that Scroll will launch more features in the future to further enhance security, reduce user costs, and provide developers with more capabilities to enable them to develop more innovative applications.

Performance of the Mainnet One Week After Launch

Since the Mainnet launched over a week ago, Scroll's development has basically met expectations. Currently, about 15 million USD has entered the Scroll chain, and some DeFi applications have started generating transactions. Scroll ranks 18th in Layer 2 TVL.

Haichen particularly pointed out that the growth rate of contract deployment has exceeded expectations, indicating that more developers are developing on Scroll. He believes this is a healthy development trend and expects to see more innovative applications deployed on Scroll in the future.

Technical Features: EVM Equivalence and Precompiled Contract Support

Scroll chooses a zkRollup solution based on zkEVM, primarily considering that zk technology can provide users with stronger security guarantees and a better user experience. Haichen emphasized the importance of EVM equivalence, which allows developers to use Ethereum's developer tools directly without the need to install new plugins.

In terms of technical details, Scroll develops zero-knowledge proof circuits in a manner that is closest to EVM. Currently, the number of precompiled contracts supported by Scroll is the highest in zk rollups, with 6 supported. This provides developers looking to deploy new zk applications with a more complete user experience.

Ecological Development Plan

For ecological development, Scroll plans to advance in phases:

1. First, focus on infrastructure service support, including RPC, indexing, cross-chain bridges, and oracles.
2. Support for the deployment of DeFi applications, with more DeFi projects expected to go live in the next two to three weeks.
3. Build an open and neutral platform that treats projects of all sizes equally.
4. Focus on supporting real-world applications, such as stablecoin payments and AA wallet projects.
5. Pay attention to public goods projects, such as developer tools.

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

Views on the Layer 2 Industry

Haichen believes that the competition in the Layer 2 ecosystem is still in its early stages. This year, zk Rollup solutions have received more attention, but there are still some issues to address, such as improving the level of decentralization and enhancing security guarantees.

He pointed out that Layer 2 still has a lot of development space, including the development of new applications to achieve faster information interaction between Layer 1 and Layer 2. Haichen believes that the Layer 2 market is not a zero-sum game, but rather a market that can continue to expand.

Overall, the Scroll team is confident about future development and looks forward to more innovative applications and developers joining the Scroll ecosystem.