Scroll co-founder Haichen Shen: The launch of the Mainnet is a new starting point, and in the future, more focus will be on real-world applications.

Scroll, as an open-source Layer 2 solution led by Asian entrepreneurs, has always attracted the attention of the community. After more than two years of development and one year of testing, Scroll officially launched its Mainnet in October 2023. As of October 27, the total locked value on the Scroll chain has exceeded $19.3 million, with the number of Mainnet wallet addresses surpassing 147,000, and the total number of verified transactions exceeding 860,000.

Recently, Scroll held the ETH Hong Kong event at Cyberport in Hong Kong. As one of the co-founders of Scroll, Haichen Shen is primarily responsible for managing the engineering team. He worked for many years at Amazon Web Services, focusing on the AI compiler field. During his participation in Ethereum community activities, he met the other two co-founders and developed a strong interest in zero-knowledge proof technology.

Haichen stated that the purpose of holding the ETH Hong Kong event is to expand the influence of the Ethereum community in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. They hope that through this event, more Hong Kong students and developers from the Asia-Pacific region will understand the latest developments of Ethereum and participate in ecological construction.

When discussing the reasons why Scroll chose the zkEVM solution, Haichen emphasized two points: first, zk technology can provide users with higher security and faster final confirmation times; second, EVM equivalence is crucial for developer experience, allowing them to use Ethereum development tools directly without modification.

Haichen also pointed out that Scroll has its unique aspects in terms of technical implementation. They adopted the approach closest to EVM to write zero-knowledge proof circuits and support the maximum number of precompiled contracts. In addition, Scroll's sorter is based on Go-Ethereum implementation, which provides greater compatibility for users and developers.

Regarding ecological development, Haichen stated that Scroll is currently focusing on supporting infrastructure services, including RPC, indexing, cross-chain bridges, and oracles. In the coming weeks, more DeFi applications will be launched on Scroll. In the long term, Scroll hopes to create an open and neutral platform that treats all developers equally. They are particularly focused on real-world applications such as stablecoin payments and AA wallet projects, as well as public goods projects that benefit the overall ecological development.

During the entrepreneurial process, Scroll also faced technical challenges. Haichen mentioned that while building zkEVM, they encountered many unforeseen issues. Through collaboration with the open-source community and multiple rounds of code restructuring, they ultimately achieved the expected performance level.

Regarding the competition and development of the Layer 2 track, Haichen believes that the entire ecosystem is still in its infancy. He pointed out that in the future, issues such as trustlessness and security need to be addressed, and he also looks forward to seeing more innovative projects developed on zk Rollup. Haichen emphasized that the Layer 2 market is not a zero-sum game, but a field with significant growth potential.