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

Recently, Scroll officially launched its Mainnet, which is an open-source Layer2 solution led by a highly regarded Asian startup team. During the ETH Hong Kong event held at Cyberport in Hong Kong, Scroll's co-founder Haichen was interviewed and shared the company's latest developments and future plans.

Haichen is one of the three co-founders of Scroll, primarily responsible for the engineering team. He previously worked for many years at Amazon Web Services, focusing on research in AI compilers. His interest in zero-knowledge proof technology motivated him to join the Scroll project, dedicated to using this technology to provide scalability solutions for Ethereum.

When discussing why they chose to hold the Ethereum community event in Hong Kong, Haichen stated that it is to expand Ethereum's influence in the Asia-Pacific region. He believes that while Hong Kong has a strong business atmosphere, it lacks an active Ethereum community. Through this event, they hope to attract more students from Hong Kong and developers from the Asia-Pacific region to get involved and learn about the latest developments in Ethereum.

Regarding the significance of the launch of Scroll Mainnet, Haichen stated that it is an important milestone and marks a new beginning. After two and a half years of development and a year of testnet operation, Scroll has completed the infrastructure development, including zkEVM circuits and block generators. In the final stage, the team focused on optimizing security and invited third-party organizations for a comprehensive audit.

One week after the Mainnet launch, the development of Scroll is basically in line with expectations. Approximately $15 million in assets have entered the Scroll chain, and some DeFi applications have begun to generate transactions on the chain. Haichen specifically pointed out that the growth rate of contract deployments has outpaced the growth of the total locked value (TVL), indicating strong interest from the developer community in Scroll.

Regarding the technology choice, Haichen explained why Scroll chose a zkRollup solution based on zkEVM. He believes that zk technology can provide users with higher security and a better experience, while EVM equivalence ensures that developers can directly use development tools on Ethereum without modification.

In the future ecological development plan, Scroll will first focus on infrastructure services such as RPC, indexing, and cross-chain bridges. Subsequently, it will support the deployment of more DeFi applications. Haichen emphasized that Scroll aims to build an open and neutral platform that will not favor large or small projects. They are particularly focused on real-world applications such as stablecoin payments and AA wallet projects, as well as public goods that benefit the entire ecosystem.

Regarding the competition in the Layer 2 track, Haichen believes that the entire industry is still in its infancy. He pointed out that zk Rollup technology needs further decentralization and improved security to gain users' trust. Haichen believes that the Layer 2 market is not a zero-sum game, but a field with huge growth potential, and he looks forward to seeing more innovative applications emerge.