Ye Zhang: Scroll - EVM-compatible ZK rollup. Ep. 522

Transcript

welcome to epicenter the show which talks about the Technologies projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution I'm Fred an and today I'm speaking with yeah from um scroll um a ZK evm roll up on top of ethereum introducing the next generation of dydx and the next version of the dydx token welcome to the dydx chain new token mechanics mean you can stake to secure the network staking is fully decentralized in control by dydx token holders all fees are distributed to stakers earn rewards from using the dydx protocol with rewards planned for Traders and early adopters too new governance means you are in control

trading has been democratized you can vote on protocol improvements token distributions and more Bridge your dydx to seamlessly transition to dydx Chain Bridge now at bridge. dydx dotrade and contribute to the evolution of of dyd xchain open- source and Community Driven run your own validator validating is fully permissionless join us on our mission to democratize access to financial opportunity today yeah thank you so much for joining us hi thanks for hosting last to meet again cool um we first met at edcon this year so probably about six months ago um and uh had really good talk about kind

of like you know L2 Landscapes and L1 Landscapes and so on so we'll definitely get into that a bit later but um for everyone who doesn't know you tell us a bit about your background um it's also glad to meet you and also your background is very impressive I remember our long conversation debating around like l two and ler one okay sure um so hi everyone my name is yeah I'm the of scroll um my background is more from academic I work on ZK and crypto before so uh I think before like three years before school I was working on Purely on Z proof research I work on Hardware solution for Z proof because five years ago that's the biggest bottleneck for using zon proof in practice because a

proof generation is just so slow it takes like several minutes or several hours to gener proof for any computation any program so my my first task is like use Hardware like GPU and Asic to make this Pro generation faster to solve this kind of pro efficiency problem and later I work more on the theoretical side looking into how like how this kind of magic works like how you generate proof how you compress a large program into very stinct proof and more like thetical construction and later like you know I because you know the most fundamental problem of efficiency has been improved for order of magnitudes so that's why I move to more on the kind of application side where uh how we can use this kind of magic technology to scale for privacy

and for user cases so my backround is more on the kind of the research side uh like Hardware acceleration for thek statical construction behind DK and DK applications um as SC and M work on U like the research um and some some strategy stuff um to to bridge between non Tech and Tech um yeah that's about me tell tell us about the hardware limitations um that we currently face for um ZK uh technology so why why does it place um so big a burden on regular CPUs and why have why did you resort to gpus yeah that's a great question and uh uh I think so so just high level context

so um the only proof is that where you can gener proof so you have a program and but it's like too large to to execute for for WiFi for example like I'm on a phone I'm on device where I can't execute the program myself so there's a prover uh which it will generally proof to prove that it execute the program correctly this this is a result this a proof and you only need to verify the proof very efficiently so in this case Pro is more like a powerful machine where it can execute the program and J proof to save verifi effort to to kind of reexecute without re-executing you know the result is correct but the magic comes at some TR off where because

you can't just magically save weth cost so the cost is that the pro need to gener proof with much larger cost so imagine that the program um like execution takes like for example one second and then like the proof generation might takes hours time so which is like one sound or even larger overhead to generate proof so which means like initially Pro only need to run like this program like very quickly but but J proof is like you need to pay for one on times overhead to just to save verifies kind of effort and this kind of computation for gener proof involving a lot of operations on curve it's based on something called

probalistic sh proof um and it will map into a lot of operations on curve which involve large finite like large finite field operation like you know modular 256 bit large integer and that's very very expensive um but luckily it's very very easy to paralyze because uh so that's why like you know using GPU and and fpg or AC can make this become like of magnitude faster um and we had the first one to kind of tackle this problem from a more academic uh like perspective and decompose proving into several components some some components are like El curve operations um and some operations are like fft over finite

field and we can make both parts become S faster and then the end to endend proof generation can be like order of magnitude faster so then like practically you just run this proof generation over hardware and then like everything get get get get really fast and currently the state of art is that a lot of like companies are building different solutions some are more AIC driven like cyc XEL they they are more leaning toward this AIC solution which is highly customized um and super fast um but a lot of like open source invitation like from from Super rational from from a lot of teams um are more like GPU based and that can also achieve a very very significant um speed up like

10 times or even 100 times comparing with um depending on your device so the magic is in the parallelization yes yes exactly perfect cool um so you guys started uh 2021 and when I say you guys I say I mean you and your co- Founders Sandy and hen um how did you three meet yeah uh I think that's a very uh different story like we we we actually first meet meet online so my background as mentioned like I was working on academic I was working on ZK purely into that rabit hole and the other two fun co-founder Sandy and hen we work on totally three totally different separate area sand is more working on the like business side like

nonch side ecosystem building side and like high CH is more leading the engineer effort so it's very interesting that we we met actually through theam Community because Sandy has been doing like before scroll he has been like you know doing his own her own St Hub and doing regulation stuff and doing a lot of investment in crypto and he's a she's more like a builder in the whole ecosystem and she has been paying attention to the whole you know what's happening in the crypto world she noticed that there might be a huge opportunity to ler to because ler two will become the entry point for billion of users to enter Because esm is just very expensive for no more ordinary user to use so there is a huge opportunity

there to to scale using layer to and then like I would building like you know like thinking about um how to improve PR efficiency to kind of uh scale youm a general like more general purpose way and then like he is more leading some engineer effort he he has a PHD in system from from from un University of Washington he has been like working at Ai and bu system but his system is very comprehensive he build System including like GPU compiler it's very very complex system and U turning that into product so it's more like one research which you know have Pro proile concept idea have you know research and architecture idea one is like can actually turn this idea

into implementation into product level like system and S know like how to kind of you know like how you scale how to fit this kind of technical uh component into the whole um like e I'm scaling like in diagram three of us are both in like I M send through e Community we actually MCH through esm Research Forum which I I PST some early idea for oh here is you know how you can scale esm and here is you know how you can Accel approver um and how you make that possible um and then like I me H through like also like our common friend is in Isam community and also like he he had been doing some like competitive programming um and math you know like computation so that's how we connect um

and it's more like very organic and very kind of yeah like different not different way where there's Research Forum there's Community discussion and then we we talk about this interesting idea and why it's possible now and then three of us just met online start to kind of okay so let's work on this and then gradually it grows like you know totally uneffective but yeah that's a different story that's a super cool origin story because kind of like purely online I think it's maybe also a CO story because it happened in 2021 that's definitely a big yeah yeah so kind of real life events were kind of suspended um for a while um but yeah to me it's really amazing because kind of

co-founding w with someone um it's a very intimate relationship right so basically you have to work really well as a team and I kind of finding that purely online that is that is such a cool story um how was it when you guys met for the first time I think we still have some like share some common friends but all the discussions happen like in the you know either Research Forum or like in the community discussion around like layer to scaling and then like we feel like the value is pretty align we want to scale esm and we observe that there's a very vibrant esm research Community there like that's why I'm attracted and there's a vibrant ecosystem there like inm and that that's why hend is

attracted and H thinking this technology is so amazing I want to turn that into a system so it's like there's still some common friends but you know it's more like Community thing and then like people meet and uh like got to know each other and yeah yeah but you guys have met in person right yes yes it's only after I think the the earliest iners Meetup is in Dev connect in Amsterdam where that's the first time we follow was 2022 um yes yes I think so cool what scroll puts front and center is that it is evm compatible what drove you to this decision because I mean we recently spoke with um a number of other ZK rollups and um some of some of which kind of also went this

route like Hames with uh with Jord now uh polygon ZK CK ckm but um others haven't so kind of like for instance um re we recently had on azte and um Ellie from starnet and they were adamant that um the efficiency losses that you suffer from doing an OP code by op code based translation is not worth it um so H how how did you kind of settle on this design Choice yeah that that's a great question so I think uh a big a big part of that is that like you know think about your motivation from first

principle like you know why you want to even build a layer two solution so um I think for me that we observe that ECM is congested and it's very expensive and applications on ECM want to find a place where it it's very cheap it's auto secure in h the security Fromm so that's why we think you know like reducing the effort that applications can find such a solution is a way to go and also like I think from like so that's that's our first motivation like why we want to build a very simless um scaling solution that all the developer all the users can reuse everything they have to M microgate to to scroll in a simless manner and the users can reuse all their

formula like you know toolings and uh and developer can use their kind of fundry and all those toolings directly and uh and also like so that's a first ination where we don't want anyone to change any of their kind of habit to only get the benefits which is faster um cheaper um with a faster like you know like pre-confirmation time and High throughput um so that's our first um ination and second thing is that I think it's actually from the security perspective where EV has not only has a ecosystem but also has proven itself from years of of of time where you know like all the all the application deploying on this model um like hasn't been there hasn't been any any problem

with that um so that's why like we think inheriting the security from this kind of test of time model is very important even like we we are reusing to the code level where we are trying to uh reuse the code the the kind of node impementation from esm we are trying to use goam which is uh esm Cent invitation to generate block um to generate our block to make sure that the behavior is exactly the same so using that it's definitely increase the security and also because developer don't need to change any L of their code so like imagine like you know if every ler to require you to make a significant change to your code than like maybe larg legit application like unisoft a might worry that you know why should I migrate to

this chain with uh some risk in changing my code and doing this re audit so that's why like we think this is very important and uh and also like I think evm just have way more like toolings than like any other VM has like even if you think you know square has has put a lot of effort in kind of caro but like if you think about how many ination how many toolings you can use to deploy on Caro like it's very limited comparing with with the whole evm ecosystem um so that's another thing which um you know like inh the ecosystem build your own network effect and then like only then like you can think about you know what things you can you can provide some actual value to to the developer your

community and I think one last last thing is that this even distinguish us from several other um like language compatible theop is that we we are like by code level compatible with the evm so which means like per op code we will have some circuit mapping to kind of um prove on the bod level um so and and reuse all the of impementation like go eum to kind of gener a block so this guarantee us that every time eum is doing any upgrade it's very easy to apply to our chain like for example like you know there's there's some kind of ips there's hard workk and it's easy for us to adopt those changes if we are evm but if you are totally work on a different path it's very hard to kind of

follow what is what what theam is doing adopt all the Innovations from the Isam community so even if like you know there's so many Innovations like new pre compels U new discussions around like you knowm L one and we can directly take all those Innovations and apply that to layer to even some like infrastructure like 4367 PBS all those kind of great ideas like me all those kind of infrastructure to solve those problem can be reused on all scoll directly so that's why like you can always you know stay up to date with being very aligned reuse all the Innovations from the research Community without too much fragmentation um and uh eventually I think you know Le to might become

especially us might become the the the kind of like we can go you one one step ahead ofm to test some kind of eips and uh adopt some Innovations and then like if it's proven to be successful then like maybe e has a larger possibility to to kind of adopt to push this Innovation so always stay ahead always stay on top of this kind of nice Solutions and uh to benefit the whole um ECM community so so yeah there are multiple reasons but that's all like you know I can I can think about definitely like the that developer and you express the same security model with the same ecosystem and toolings are more vibrant and last thing is like you know stay always ahead on this Innovation and research um and

benefit eventually benefit the whole Isam community and I hear that 100% but can I just kind of um poke into this a bit more so if if you kind of look at um what would you say the efficiency gains you could get from not using a ZK evm would be and kind of is there any way kind of to make up the efficiency you're losing with respect to um other rollups that are using more optimized languages yeah that's a great question so I I think that's actually the biggest um like reason why you know like so many robs want to choose other virtual

machine model because they used to think like you know being BYOD level compatible building such as zvm will have a significant larger overhead maybe they they imagine like 10 times maybe like 100 times maybe like larger orad than their their kind of thicky virtual machine but the real reality is that I think they didn't expect even like us didn't expect like the Prov technology has been improved so much I I think two years ago two or three years ago I think when we start scroll compared with five years ago where the technology of ZK lies it's like the the efficiency of PR has been improved for three order of magnitude like by this kind of advanced proving system by the underlying

Hardware acceleration by proof recursion so the efficiency has already been improved for like one on times so that's why I think compared with different z r machine I don't think the KVM by level the KVM had that much overhead I think had most probably like two two or three times even like sometimes like can be even lower and that's only talking about the P cost which is not the Dominate cost for a layer two transaction so think imagine like you know for for Our Kind Layer Two transaction if you want to post data on chain that might take uh the majority of the cost which is over 90% of the the cost and then like among the kind of rest of 10% of time you know like maybe using some other DVM can save

the proving cost for like two times three times and that's only portion one portion of this 10% which means like you know it won't differ that much even if you are using other zik virtual machines but the the the hugest loss is that you lose compatibility and uh you have to rebuild your ecosystem from scratch so and you will really suffer from that so I think that's why I don't see kind of too much loss on the on the on the pr side um and U especially with the technology keep improving and we predict like the the zy technology will do improve for another 10 times like in my prediction is like in six months or one year we can make a 10 times even faster than KVM so it's it's really not that painful as as

people predict like five years ago so so you think it's kind of is it fair to kind of compare this to say um no longer building um applications in C++ uh just because I mean just because C++ may be a little bit more efficient at some things um kind of the convenience and the developer mind share that you kind of get with more um common developer language is more than makes up for this so you are you talking about like using S to write smart contract versus solidity or like oh no no no not not smart uh not smart contract just general uh General code I mean so basically I went to University a while ago and back

then um whenever we kind of took home large batches of data obviously C++ was kind of the go-to thing to kind of use just because it was much more efficient than python for instance um uh but you you're saying that kind of uh using Python and other more convenient languages for developers um this is kind of the parallel right kind of it's kind of like you you you you're saying kind of the technology has made such tremendous advancements that kind of the factor two or three that you possibly losing doesn't really matter much yeah in some sense yes like we want to keep the kind of python level developer experience but magically

reduce the overhead of vant to some degree that you know it doesn't matter like you know you optimize saf for C+ because that don't really influence your overall cost in some sense yes but it's more similar to like I think other VM are trying to kind of um like compel like I I think like it it's very similar but but one thing which is quite different is that um if you run C+ plus and python like the the complexity the underlying like CPU is like still like influence on efficiency but here like especially if you're looking at the transaction cost it's not just execution cost it's also like data cost which means like make this kind of difference become even smaller because

it's like 5% among all the cost and then you save this 5% to some degree but you know you you give up like this compati a e us but the transaction cost overall will be similar yeah yeah perfect uh I want to talk about kind of how the cost for an L2 transaction is made up later and kind of talk about data availability then so kind of I I would like to table this for now um let's talk about kind of the the uh creation of scroll a little bit more so I remember the ECC presentation where where Jordie for the first time um talked about building a uh op code by op code transposition into a zkm that was in June 2021 blew

everyone's Minds um how did you f how did you guys fit into your timeline because I know scroll scroll was also founded in 2021 yeah that's uh that's a really great question so I think a lot of people like maybe don't know the the the story behind I think I think while we started we start in early 2022 in January I think that that's earliest we have this idea for we want to build a layer too but the first idea of scroll is that because we have this Hardware idea in mind so we want to design some this decentral Pro Network where we can use a network of miners or Prov to generate proof for us to provide enough computation power for us to generate proof for large applications so that's our initial idea firstly having this AR

architecture and then the evm the VM is just application and then initially we are thinking about more even our initial Post in I think in April 2021 it's talking about like zy virtual machine how you ZK CPU how that you know cycle works but later I think I talk with I met I met Barry from E Foundation who is like who actually invented the Rob the concept of of the Rob Barry right head right yeah bar white head yeah and uh he he he has been thinking through like whether the qm is possible whether by Cod level like the qvm is possible or not and then like we like he he he read our documentation and then like say said okay so if you also want to build

something like this we also have some idea why not like you know we collaborate on this and then like share if you think this is the right approach to to build why don't we just build in the open everything is open source and then like just build that I think at that time that's where I think all the the KVM even including like like hermit like the idea from from from Jordy like all start from there so I think it's Barry is discussing some with someone else to about this idea for how you use l cup to solve the biggest problem for read and write to storage because because like in Z proof you you to prove um program for for some static program which for example you have some sorting

you prove this fixed program but VM needs to read and write the state the storage and that mapping is very costly because you need to use a Mer tree every time you read from element you need to prove a merco CH branch and the idea is that we can use lookup to solve this problem like totally like because you only need to build a lookup table and then you can do efficient batch lookup to into that that that table and that's where all the idea come from including like jordis I think Barry has been talking with a lot of teams like including like Jordy us as well as some other ler two teams um and then we are the first one to commit to want to build in the open and we want to kind of build with with their team um as as

exploration to kind of because we believe that building the public is a one of the core Spirit of of Isam Community why it's so vibrant like because people can kind of contribute freely people can kind of collaborate really and then I think um Jordan is more leaning towards like Star based approach but the architecture is very very similar it's all origin from the the like the the very like old dock where you use luap to solve this problem and then like he's he like I think then like he's back out like he want to use Stark he takes some different design choices and then like he CH to like build build build with with with polygon and build their own like um I think he he build their own like instruction set

to and also interpreter to interpret by code into that instruction set but we are more firmly believe that directly build circuit for each op code so that you can have per op code mapping you don't need to build any interpreter you don't need to build um a a sequencer from scratch you can reuse everything that hism has so that's why like um us and the psse team which is short for privacy and Skilling exploration team led by bar redhead and work towards the direction where it's opal level compatible maximum the usability of layer one sequencer and then Jord uh leads towards a stock based um backend and some kind of um other instruction set with an interpreter um but still

like with this kind of back code level compatibility so that's where different approaches differ but it's all actually arranged from the break through the idea for okay use Lup to do this use custom gate to kind of express your your op codes so it's very similar it's I think it's exactly the same timeline actually like because um I I remember like you know Barry talking with with many teams about you know whether they are interested in kind of building this together um but there will be different considerations behind teams around like how this need to be built um and like different design choices and we are more aligned on the other side like you know use this kind of kig use snark use maximum usability and build something like in the public so yeah

that that's a difference but everyone start the the same point with a similar architecture for how you handle this memory thing yeah this is uh super interesting to kind of hear that it kind of all started with um Barry Whitehead's idea of kind of how to do the lookup um so you guys recently kicked off your main if I remember correctly was um Mid October um so tell us about that yeah uh it has been a really really long journey um from from start to to meet um I think we we we officially launch in the Genesis happens in like October 10th and we we encode uh some like the future is open using uh like a word language um to

to to express that you know we think the word need to be connected it's Global and uh the future is open um and then like I think the official opening is on made October um I think before it's it's really exciting like the whole team is in in Vietnam doing some offsite like we we actually there like celebrating in person with each other like because it's a joint effort not only like research not only engineering but also like the whole team in like BD Devo like Ops all those different teams like join Force to to build this together not only a product but also like not only a like just an engineer effort but but it's a it's a community effort and I think we

we have been like really doing a lot of lot of like preparation to make this happen like our test net have been running for over like 15 months from pre-alpha test net to Alpha test net to Beta testet lot of upgrades a lot of testing I think we like before before Manet launch we had very nervous about you know the security because you are really launching something playing with like users assets like users can really deposit your money money on your chain you really need to be responsible so we we pay huge attention to like security monitoring system everything else to to kind of make sure it's a successful launch we have done like for example we we even like before we launch we fetched in our testing envirment we fetched all the transactions from from polygon from

bance from from different chains that to kind of replace our in our testing environment to make sure that we can gener proove for those transactions to kind of stress T um and also like we we we spend a quite amount of money on auditing like internal and external internally we have some kind of red team to looking keep looking for bug attacking our te our our test net and the environment and how to make fi proof how to kind of attack the system and externally there is like we contract the best the world class level of like audit are like including like open zbling zic for for for node and and the contract auditing a lot of of companies like that

we also like set a like $1 million bu bounty to for for for the community to support any bucks our system so it's like a lot of preparation um and also like we our team has been like you know talking with a lot of project to to deploy and test their application on theoa um yeah I think I think it's all like it's very exciting moment that you turn you literally turn some open source project open source demo to a product uh like uh like like 100% like ready product online so I think that's a very very like Incredible Journey for me and also like you see like you know your your research results from from paper to

a product and used by a lot of people so it's it's it's quite exciting and we are really looking forward to kind of since after like you know how we build the community how we keep improving attack um yeah I think it's yeah it's it's really a moment that we we can't we we will remember like forever like you know it's launched and very exciting yeah congratulations on that um tell us about um the scroll Comm community so kind of who is your community and do you have people who are building on scroll exclusively yeah yeah that that makes sense so first thing I think my my definition for community is that there will be like engineer and researchers who are part of like they can build their own product uh they can build

their own project they can do their own research but we we communicate we collaborate we talk in the open we C some kind of talk about some some Benchmark stuff so those are I think a part of our community and by for example we are hosting the Symposium which is like U um like due to the Manet is currently recently reduced the frequency a little bit but we will catch up very soon is that previously it's like um bi-weekly Cadence where we invite the ZK researchers uh and application developer to talk about their idea for building building z k like what application they are building using ZK because I think a lot of if if you look at Twitter like all the kind of places where people only like talk about like some marketing

material we talk about how great they are like how how fast they are like why they can achieve like you know 100% privacy all those stuff but no one really dig into details about the architecture and want to build a like a place where people can like dive really really deep into like what they are building and the architectural stuff so I think it more happens in like Vicky Study Club where people dive into like like very academic papers some mathematical constructions but very few people had some place to share very deeply about the application ideas like how they build this the application what technology they are using what the architecture look like and then that's where the Symposium sit where people have one hour time to to present their

idea in depth about what application they they are building they can technology and then people can like ask questions so I think those are like in that way we are building a like research community and also because everything is building the open like as I mentioned like our our the KVM reuse all the toolings from for example like the pr library from from zcash team and there are a lot of other teams like also building on top of this this this crypto library that those are also I consider as part of our community like Z Community to to build that's what one part and second part is more like developer Community where people deploy applications and we introduce after after Manet we introduced something called scroll Oro f um so usually I'm

not a big fan of of of this kind of f thing but it's actually a so Bank where if you deploy applications uh you you you you are early in our ecosystem you can claim you like you know one really cool scroll or F from from us I I think that design uh I don't know if you have noticed is that it's totally different from like just images like usually have just images stored somewhere else and then you put some kind of link on on chain which is a f ft what we do is that we do something similar to like Unis with3 which is a generative curve uh it's a polinomial where if you deploy a contract you because the time you deploy it because of the kind of uh the

sequence like how many contract you are deployed then like you can get a different polinomial and then like we can draw this polinomial uh like on chain like you know you get a different like U I think if you deploy earlier that the the degree will be four or five I I can't remember so it's like you get this kind of curve with with different like so many kind of turning points and um to show that you are early in our ecosystem and we really appreciate our effort um because you know being ecosystem early it definitely introduce some risk for okay so whether it's battle tested or not so we will welcome the early Builders to to join our ecosystem that's only for welcome and

like to prove that you are you are there and you are there earlier and so like everything we do is like I think is very cool and very it's based on like fundamentals that make us possible which is zero not proof and polinomial and then like you know application you deploy you get a polinomial you get a nft like you know which you know draw this kind of really cool polinomial I think that that that will definitely introduce some kind of a lot of people just trying to trying to kind of deploy maybe a bunch of like ec20 contracts but that's within our prediction our our our kind of Mo motivation object objective is that encourage more people to try deploy your first first contract and in a neutral way it's not like we select oh we give you this we give you that in

unfair way but we we are more we have we want to hold this kind of like a blockchains principle of being incredibly neutral and then people every people you deploy you you can get something as and also Al experience like how simless that is so I think that's that's something like which there are some Community from there and also like there are some more native applications which um we share the same value and then they believe that you know we believe our value of being open being commun driven be incredibly neutral and then they come to us because we we we don't provide brand to application specifically because we think that will make your ecosystem become a zero some game because basically like there will always be new chance like new layer one new Layer Two two they always launch

their their token with they read aot bunch of money they can give a lot to to new developer like I give you this money you come to our chain to deploy but then like it will become a competing game which I give you this amount the other chain give you that amount and then you go to the other chain and it seems like it's not like we we are making the whole ecosystem grow we are like making this kind of small pie for crypto larger but it's more like I want to compete with with with each other so what we want to do is that we want to attract we want to focus on like building stuff and attract more organic Community where you know they are very organic ATT track B because they see like there is a huge opportunity out scroll by being early

and U and also like it's one of the most legit and general purpose like top top layer too and there will be a huge opportunity there so what we are focusing on is that we introd we we make we get everything ready for Developers for example like we have e scan support um so users and developer can use your most familiar infrastructure we get Chan link as Oracle support which means like you know all the kind of defy can use your your most familiar Oracle we get we get all the kind of indexing RPC provider ready so that's something we will focus on like build an environment that developer are easy to build but we don't like enforce you to to build like what we want we we just create this kind of foundation we keeping through our

documentation tutorial workshops um and then like a lot of people are actually attracted by this it's like um for some more like commercialized application for example one there is versa like you know there are some other wets which are native to scroll um and there are some like new defi like H finance and some other Financial applications on scroll and amazingly it's like a lot of like small AI games like happen to our scroll like I think days ago like I don't know who who build this but like there's a game called chat and PC where you you chat with with the AI image and then like you try to NE iate through this conversation about how much you can get so and then like you end up if you end up being being high you can get some

score it's it's very simple game but it's very fun so I think being fun is really one important way to attract attract Builders I I think a lot of I know like a lot of like applications are still building the because the more serious more like uh commercialize more ready the project is it will take a longer time to to build and being ready but for for every love with listening like pay attention to our ecosystem account our M account U you will notice a lot of good opportunities good projects that building on top of us which will come out in the next a few months um and in term of like also support a lot of grassroot hexons we have been I think we we probably participate over like 20 hex maybe like

around the world like everywhere almost and then like we a very recent one is that um East Global in New York we it's the first time that we surpassed all the all other chance in term of deployment and with a small price so usually like you know it's it's not just you know people offer high price so people Deploy on you but if every evm and and then like you can provide something kind of subal changes or like something cool like you get the most deployment and then like it's very welcom in this kind of hiker group and U it's very exciting because it's even like before our Manet launch where a lot of other chance have all those

kind of even better infrastructure support but we can still get so many hackers interesting kind of building on top of us I think it's definitely something like which we are kind of celebrating like um because this is very organic grassroot hexon project I do believe that in this way like you can you can grow your grassroot community to a large extent so those are like all developer communities we have you know including like as I mentioned like some wet some some gam some some kind of um like def Fabrications um and there's a lot of haon groups um and other other step I think looking forward we will um expect more Regional Community so we will start seriously building community

in in s places uh including uh like turkey uh Nigeria uh Malaysia and Argentina that's our our our plan for like where we seriously want to put some effort in to grow the community there because um our our our mission is really to scale um to scale ethereum to sometime like you know if you like we want to codify trust and uh like Empower this ownership for for individual and CH Financial inclusion so and you see that all the blockchains are not scalable enough for B of users for even like they they don't even know like where all those one B users come from um so we have very clear goal for how to get

those users because the the users like who need crypto are where the one billion people really come from and you do see like you know in Us in even in China in some kind of other more like in Europe a lot of places people don't really need crypto and because they have really established like Financial system they only do that for crossb like you know payment and maybe people use that but in a lot of places like like Africa like you know I have been there for for for 10 days for this ler to trip and to really understand like how people are using crypto in practice you figure out that a lot of people are really suffer from this kind of currency inflation and they have a lot of problem that can be

tackled by blockchain we really want to kind of help those users and on board user use those users to ecosystem um so that's why like we we selected two those places which they suffer from the the problems of and they have real need for crypto um and then like we want to double down effort in building Regional Community and uh eventually I think I I'm imagine like in few few months or like few years scroll will be think about as a the ler to that has the most real users coming from developing countries from from from from some places in Asia some so all those places where if application come to deploy they know that there's real user there it's not just the same group of people like

you know migrating from this chain to that chain because it's a new chain so that's our like Mission and I I consider that to be part of our community but we are still building that we we just started on Turkey but we was like putting some like um so if you look at like you know this year a lot of like project pulls out to from from from Temp Connect um but we are still like building a very very large probably largest ever event called L today with L to beat we are co-hosting that um it's like over 2,000 people capacity to to kind of talk about L Toth and we are seriously building a community starting from Turkey but other places we will U if you are like you know in the RO regions you really want to change change people's Liv there then like you know

you can you can talk with us and we we we want to kind of build committee there seriously we I think I see like where our community can come from okay so basically what what you're saying is you're trying to grow uh the community organically um through culture rather than through kind of like monetary incentives which is kind of often the way that it goes in crypto yes um speaking of incentives what's this the token situation for scroll yeah it's uh for our legal reason like you know we we we haven't like you know uh really publicly you know I'm more thinking like you know it's more like a mechanism where think about like why you why you even need

this like you know maybe there are some reasons for desde sequencer desde approver but there might be some other other other models for that so uh I think we have to uh thinking through what's a best mechanism and uh and uh like incentive and model for for our system to work the best instead of okay so just this this this token thing but yeah we we we have been working on some mechanism design which um aligned with our system to make our system become more stable and more usable but you know for some legal or some some other concerns like you know we are not yeah but but currently gas on scroll is paid in E yes yes you already alluded to it um in your

last answer um you currently still have centralized sequences it's kind of it's been normalized over the last like year or two um but in principle what it means is that you kind of you have one or several permissioned um sequences people who can or entities who can actually build blocks which is very much not what blockchains should strive to because kind of in the in terms of decentral decentralization kind of your least decentralized um component kind of determines how decentralized like the entire system is right and so if you have one centralized sequencer you have essentially the entire chain is built by

a single entity um what what are your plans towards decentralization yeah that that's a great question so I definitely agree that you know that's in some sense like it's different from like whole Norm normally like a lay layer one blockchain works and like why only a few parties can can produce block um but I think one think about this dation problem I I think about like you know again like from first for like why you need dis anization and there are several reasons like in l two context specifically there are like maybe maybe three aspect I I think one is sequencer who generate the block who you so who can you know produce a block and uh like then pass that prover PR is basically generator

for each block and to prove that okay so all the transaction inside this block is valid and then like finally submit this this this block and they prove unchain and then unchain verifier will verify this so there are two parties one is sequencer generate block one is prover like gener proofs and the two parts definitely need to be decentralized but for different reasons so for for sequencer the reason is that so actually like one one thing like you know just to to add to this is that even if we are using a centralized sequencer um like what every to is is is doing is that it does influence your users fun security because if you think about like so what what the bad things can do like from a

sequer perspective so you can set a transaction sequencer include that transaction your block prove a gener block the gener proof for this block so if we are operating a sequencer we want to do something bad right if we insert a bad transaction then we can't generate proof for this bad transaction because you know Z case the proof well kind of only attached to U like the right transaction the valid transaction so we can't insert any bad bad transaction so that's number one because zy proof you can't do something bad second thing is that what you can do is that you can sensor transaction if user send your transaction to a central sequencer C sequencer say no I want to include you and but that can be like you know solved

by okay so if user find that one one layer to that accept their transaction it can send this transaction unchain and then like later one like verifier will enforce that if you don't include this transaction in maybe 24 days then anyone can submit the block so in that way like you know you can avoid this kind of censorship resistant problem like uh and and users will never suffer from the problem of you can't withdraw a fund because you can always do that we can't you know even if you reject like you can you can do that and then so let's go back to so social sequence that influence the systems kind of security but what it really influen is that uh there are some sensor like realtime

censorship resistance problem so imagine like you know you will be liquidated in the next one minute you send a transaction to to deposit some money but then we reject and then you are liquidated and then even if like your transaction is like guaranteed to be included in in next few blocks it doesn't really matter because you're already being liquidated so that's a problem and that's where you can use design sequencer to to to help but again again like there are still maybe some other way to solve this problem maybe you can encrypt your you some encryp P where you increase the transaction where s can distinguish which transction which and then it had to include and then like after decryption you know like what's what's it included that can also solve this problem right so like it's dation sequencer is a tool not like we have to

kind of oh we we have to for dation we de centralized but it's for soling some problems and we we do think that's a promising way to solve this real time censorship res problem and also there might be some legal legal issues where there are multiple like you know entities running sequencer in different regions then like the the risk for like being more sensorship resistance can be reduced so that's for sequencer and for the prover um there are some kind of problems the thing that it can solve is that it can SC it can be very scalable uh where imagine that there is a network of of of minor or or Pro running running or kind of proving proving algorithm so it's very different from proof of work even if you also have a high requirement

for Hardware because the key proof is that like proof of work is basically like 10,000 people Computing for the same Randomness and then who get the answer who can submit but the key proof is that you have fixed deterministic algorithm and anyone can execute and get it and that's it so it's it's it's quite different and so in term of it's more like Outsource computation Outsource this use for computation to the pro and then like having this Dental Pro Network can help you um to kind of having some backup if you know one PR party just like goes down um and then like other other PR can still General prove for you so you have some backup you have some more stronger less guarant

and also you don't need to buy machines yourself it's more scalable like people can use their own machines to General proove yeah it's more resilient um so kind of to to actually gain the force inclusion that you talked about earlier if you're being censored on on the L2 um you need to make all transaction data available um on the L1 so basically this is kind of why we're now getting um DK sharding with blobs where kind of data um is is going to get uh well temporary data is going to get much cheaper and so on um but it's still um the main cost driver for l2s so it's on the order of 95% or upwards of that as compared to

kind of just um the check-ins that you kind of need to do to kind of prove the state right so there's a couple of elos um that kind of have gone the validium route recently um where basically they decided to not actually post all transaction data to L1 just because it kind of drives up um price on the L2 currently prices aren't crazy um but I mean they have been crazy in the past they'll probably become crazy again at some point which will kind of mean that lots of applications that are currently viable kind of like the AI game where you kind of you negotiate with uh an NPC they will no longer be viable on L2 right so what what's what's your

strategy there so I mean basically even when Dan Shing comes call data will become maybe 10 times cheaper or so but this is still pretty expensive for lots of applications so what are your thoughts on kind of going the validium r yeah that's a that's a great question so I I think for this VM I think so I I think RM definitely trade off some security for being cheaper but for for us I think currently we are sticking to as SC mention will stick to posting data on ethereum and strictly inire the same security from ethereum um so because our I think for most rup like different rup can have different value proposition I think for us it's always like Security

First is always like Drive most of our design decisions including like that's why we do this auditing this way we open source in this way we have back bounding this way so it drives almost all the decisions because we do feel like there will be a crucial amount of application that need this level of guarantee and then like we we we make this become our first priority so for a for for quite a long time we will stick to this um like approach and get the what we what we think is that I think ralic is Rec sentage just post a blog post about like different layer tools and there is actually a spectrum for what applications need like on the on the kind of left hand side there's a key store you know which is the uh the

fundamentals of of all the smart contract wallets storing their keys key mappings key value mappings which need extremely high security um and then there in which store your identity information and then the more on the left side the the higher security you want like maybe defi institutional money and some government with they want to kind of issue some something important they need Security on the right hand side it might be gaming like some nft or some kind of those things I think our value proposition is that scroll menion will lie on the left hand side where we want to kind of attract more security G applications and then like you know if Dan Shard is not there yet we we we might spare some effort in helping to

kind of build this solution for for for all for everyone in the whole ecosystem so that's that's our goal like you know how how we handle this situation and if if we really reach the point for where D sh is not even enough I do see like maybe some some other teams building layers three on top of us they can be validum they can kind of you know do other Trad off that on top of us they can even use State def um post data on a different way um but that that's what I see like you know how this will will goes it's like we will remain a very very high standard for security and to attract the most kind of legit large the most fundamental applications and then like if you if game really really require you know like high high through

like extremely high throughput or like that thing they can build a lay three as valum on top of us um and U like I think it can be either can be L three or some other other SI Solutions like at the same security level we were trying to kind of reduce the cost like for example we also working on data compression like how you kind of press the data you post on chain so there's some way like which which you can reduce your your data post on chain become like three times smaller so there are some way for for doing compression we are looking into that how how you reduce the bridging cost but everything like stands like it can't like you know security should should always be the Baseline and U should be never something we will

compromise do do you think we'll be able to do data availability optimistically at some point because that would solve a lot of problems right so I I think it still depends on the like secure assumption I think for to me like you know I think for Scrolls mention like so so firstly I I don't see any kind of very very well established like optimistic data solution even if it's like you know there are teams like AIA is building some D solution but I think it will still take some time to test whether this works or not whether there are some other issue related to because I know like you have been running this infrastructure L one you know like how many things sub things that is needed like there's Oracle RPC provider all

those things might require direct access to the data and ideally on the same chain so you don't know like if you switch to the other solution what the subal changes you need to make and whether and I I don't I don't think there all the most of the solutions is mature that mature enough for for men chain to mag from but I I think we are still remaining optimistic we were kind of always pay attention to like the progress from other companies from from other Solutions but right now we think you know it's it's not there yet and we are stick to this kind of security principle and encourage all the kind of L 3 consider that as an option if you know you will have some trust assumption yeah you posited earlier that there'll

be um a whole ecosystem of l2s with um different trust assumptions and different Associated costs I agree that that's kind of like the the goal but we we're currently very far away from that goal so just before we started recording this uh this podcast a tweet from um Joseph dong came out and it it literally read l2s don't actually scale ethereum they just fragmented into a bunch of unrelated chains obviously alluding to the fact that um inter L2 um Bridges um currently are not operative so basically the way to kind of go between eles to kind of bridge

theorum which is obviously um very costly so in principle it seems like um bridging across different l2s should be possible because they have the same um security assumptions in kind of building on top of um ethereum when when do you think we'll get there and how do you see it happening yeah that's a great question so I think in term of like interball like between L to I do think like people are there are like two directions like people are going towards um it's it's athal it's not something that contradicted to each other so one one approach is that as you describe like you all the layer to are based on etherum so they post the same state root on on E layer one um so what you can do

is that so especially for the kop with with with a faster like shorter finality is that imagine there's this exam layer one you post two two State Roots like the for example there is scroll there is like the other chain A and B and then like what you can do to access B sta is that you can read the state root of of another layer two from mum layer one because your root is also there so you can read that and then provide a proof proving that the the story slot the element you want to read from the other layer tool is a like provide this Merle path to that rout and that you can trustly read and like operate over the other chains like state so that's how you can

do this yeah trust way because think about like you know two different layer ones because they have totally different valid like validator set you the bridge had to be kind of like multi or some other like validator Network where you don't have this kind of shared security but for different layer TOS Li based layer to you can read the other chain State through this proof like merco path from the other chain then like but this introduce some latency because you need some time to generate proof and it might break the compati because because of this latency and uh so I do feel like in some sense it's possible to have some standard in messaging between different layer tooths but it's still not super practical and you experience friendly to

kind of do that here fully translated people still use bridge to to bridge regardless um and I I do feel like you know as the proving technology has been improved uh as as you know more L to become adopting some similar standard for how you how this communication can happen uh it might be solved so that's one one One Direction the direction like people keep talking about is share about share sequencer so share sequencer is basically like where the S party sequence to sequence like you know like transactions from two different chains so that's how like that's where you can if you want to interact with the other layer too and the S sequencer know the order so that's like how you kind of maybe possible like you have this

kind of you know some level of compatibility between different chains but there are like still a lot of problem really to this because most these share sequencer are only ordering the transactions they don't guarantee that like one transaction successfully done like you execute the other it thenes has that level of automacy so I like both s do very early I think we we are kind of watching closely to those those research directions um but currently it's just focusing on building be one CH I think eventually different layer to will have different communities um and it's good to have some standard to to talk with each other um because it's at least compared with different layer one fragmentation it's rically possible to to do that in a trust way um but it it

it still takes some time I mean when you say different l2s will have different communities that's kind of at odds with what you said earlier that kind of different applications will choose different l2s based on um the security assumptions they need right so basically I may want to play um some game that doesn't need a lot of security assumptions but I still want my smart contract wallet living on a different chain right yes exactly yes yes I I think due to this kind of different um property and assumptions like eventually different layer TOS will have different like because they have different value proposition they have total different mission and vision like some want to kind of you know get users through marketing and that maybe part of

their brand and some might you know like want to build a totally different new new community from evm and uh um but we are like yeah we we we're trying to kind of like but you don't see you don't see like the same users kind of using different chains for different applications right now yes it's because most chains don't have that many like you know exciting applications it's like you know the same suit for for Def and like but I do think like you know as you know but but you can feel like different CH have totally different brand right like some chance like the first impression is this some some chance first impression this like s first impression for most people is like super

high s alignment High very reges for their tech and and security assumptions so if you go to kind of say if you go to the field in turkey or Malaysia or Nigeria or Argentina any of the countries you mentioned earlier will users who will actually use this to kind of solve real world problems um will they care which chain they're on so in my View kind of the the DB developer will kind of decide what kind of is the best security or the needed security model for their DB and then the user ideally down the line they won't know which chain it's on right they don't they don't have to care about the vi it's just like um you and I browse the internet every day and we don't we don't

really think about tcpip just happens in the background yes yes that that's the most ideal situation so by developing Community there I'm more saying like you know doing more like developer education and and growing like a grassroot developer Community because what's different like in development Community versus developing a global Community there is that like local community can spot a lot of like local problems because if I'm I'm I'm here I don't know if I haven't traveled to those places I don't know like you know what people are building there like what what problem people are facing so like getting developer there and uh like track value of line developer there grow there can help getting more local developer to build application on top of you and then like potentially get more users so

that's also like some so that's how you grow this it's not like we are acquiring users and then like user have to choose their chain but it's more like from application Level we can kind of help more grassroot developer to to build to solve local problems and then like users will use them and then use scw as default chain so what does the road map look like like for scroll I I think the very very kind of short like technical road map will be we will use data compression to massively reduce the transaction cost so like anyone can expect like you know transaction now scroll will become like you know way cheaper like in in a few months and why it takes a few months is

because uh we were trying to minimize the the frequency for doing upgrade because doing upgrade is very very kind of scary because you are using most things to upgrade the important part of your your protocol um so being cheap using data compression uh is very important part thing we will do and second thing is that we are keep focusing on improving the security so uh as you mentioned like censorship resistency we are trying to like you know have some some solution for that um and this kind of proposer sequencer failure if if you know we are not producing block then like what will happen um so we we are working on solutions for that uh that will also like be solved like in in in around three months like you know

after that a large upgrade will happen at that time and then you will see like ler to beat which is a reference for checking ler to security like a lot of red area will become green and and also we are exploring how to like even add more security more than just what L to B talking about like people worry about like the has bug the has bug so like we have exploring like multi multi-prover um system like where we can add another additional prover so if they keep that work out the other prover can still be back up to kind of you know like make sure like it's secure so security is very very important for us and then like if application care about security they can come to us and then that that will

be a like shorterm goal and for the research we are we have been keep focusing on like dation we will have some proposals published to kind of discuss very broadly um and uh we we are keep focusing on like working on the Next Generation the key VM to who make the become 10 time faster there already some designs there we are still doing Benchmark for which PES I want to use how to architect the Next Generation the VM so it's also there um as a longterm long-term thing and in term of ecosystem community building I think we will get all the kind of necessary infra as I mentioned ready like training just integrated like days ago um and un will pass your governance and a lot of like

basic building blocks will be there like in a few weeks or so like you know come and build and then like we will have some like Community Initiative for the community to to to interact to to kind of engage um and more calls on Discord um to kind of like really understand what what our community really need um yeah I think a lot of initiative will come out and also start community building in the regions we we select and then like double down effort in in kind of helping Builders there to build so those are like a short term like you know um yeah and also like in term of security also definitely security console like which we remove this m to some really credible uh security conso

members that they they will control like upgrade so that we are not controlling like the the schooles like upgrade so those are things will will happen in short term like they like being cheaper alra outra like high security um and also a lot of community initiative and keep doing research so that that's for that's what you can expect in the next like three months and uh I I know a lot of projects are coming to to scroll ecosystem so like follow ecosystem account and scroll account and scroll our our man official account will me for protocol UPG update um our our members event hexus all those stuff ecosystem we talking about ecosystem project um there's weekly like what will happen so

if you know feel free to kind of interact and then like use what like understand what's happening there and uh what's the best way to kind of get in touch is is there are all the links on your website the best way should be like our Twitter where scroll underly zkp is our official account and then there's another ecosystem account uh which is build with scroll build on scroll I need to check but that's that's like we have another ecosystem account for following the recent ecosystem updates so uh if you follow that very closely there is weekly updates about what everything happening on scroll and we will support multi language community so if you have Chinese you are like Spanish speaking turkey speaking like it like there will be like corresponding account like you

can follow to to know more about scroll and join our Discord definitely yeah perfect thank you so much for joining us today