A decentralized, global team of developers is shirking the urge to be the first to scale Ethereum. As part of CoinDesk's Projects to Watch 2023, Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng discusses Ethereum's "zero-knowledge" arms race and how Scroll stands out from the competition.
A decentralized global team of developers is shirking the urge to be the first to scale Ethereum joining us now to discuss is Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng. Hi Sandy. Um Congratulations on being chosen as one of coin desks projects to watch. Um So, yeah, tell us about this. It seems like your approach is to take things a little bit more slowly, which is very different from the way things usually go in crypto. Um Can you break that down for us? Yeah, we think of it um as building in a way that's more deliberate and um putting community first and also putting security first. I think our fundamental belief is that people don't want their infrastructure provider to be particularly fast or loud, but they do want their infrastructure providers such as solution to be reliable, to be transparent and also to be working unselfishly for its developers. So um so I think in terms of market positioning and and how we think about the the mission of scroll, um then the, you know, the the the speed to market is not our our first priority. Can you describe what scroll is that for, for, for the folks at home who, who are just becoming familiar with it. Um Yeah, of course. So um scroll is a ZKEBN protocol and we're open source since day one and we're working very hard on building something that's called a byte code level uh compatible uh ZKEBN. Um So what that means for developers and users is that we are offering the same developer experience as building and working on Ethereum may net. So I'm curious about one thing. Uh we, we, we kind of profile scroll and on, on, on coin dot com. I want to understand because there was a section in that story where we're talking about polygon and Matt labs at the two other rivals in, in this Zero knowledge arms race. Um And it appeared to, to me that uh your point is that we are taking it slowly because we want to get it perfectly right, but they have not gone slowly. Uh And therefore they will not be getting it perfectly right. I'm just trying to understand whether that's what was implied. And if not, then what was it really? And if it was that, that, that that's what was implied, then, then what is it that you are doing differently in that, in, in that search of pursuit of perfection that, you know, they have not done and how do you know that they haven't? Um So we don't actually um so I think that the high level answer to that is that I think having multiple layer two is very bullish for Ethereum and it ensures there's plenty of competition and every team is striving for the same long term vision of scaling Ethereum. But because of the team's various DNAs and different tools are available and slightly different kind of beliefs, they're going about it in, in various ways. And this variety is, is good for the community overall and it's, it's very good for us to see and learn from some of our competitors. So, um you know, in terms of how we like to go about things, I don't like to think about it as we're going about it slowly, but we're going about it in a deliberate way. And um and we're trying to make sure that the security standards and then the way we're doing things such as kind of centralization at every level and making sure there's no single point of failure is adhering to a standard that we're comfortable with and we're proud of presenting. So that's not to imply anything on anybody else. I think, you know, um some of the other players that you mentioned have played tremendous, have, have, you know, have, have, have made tremendous strides in terms of building Zkebm in their own vision and have made significant breakthroughs. What do you expect to see over the next few months in Ethereum scaling? What are some of the big trends to watch out for? Um So I think over the next few months. Um We can expect to see, um, scroll come to main net hopefully. And by our definition, that means unencumbered. Um, it means, um, you know, it's a, it's a free bridging experience and hopefully there will be lots and lots of ecosystem projects for, for the users and developers to play with. You know, one of our, uh one of our viewers has a question. He, he Tactical Apex, I think is the name he is going by. He's asking uh who are your backers? Um Yeah. Well, thank you for that question. So we're, we're, we're backed by a lot of um fantastic kind of supporters of the Ethereum ecosystem. And we picked our backers very deliberately as well to try and find um you know, um backers that are value aligned with us and also see part of the long term vision that we see. And so we, we're, we're, we're very happy to be back by poly chain and um bank crypto and um the China amongst many others. All right. Uh So uh what's the reasoning also behind scroll's lines of code playing out in real time on its github repository? Yes. So, so, so scroll started off as a completely open source community project. That means we wanted to experiment with a way of protocol building that is global and also completely transparent since day one. And we've really benefited from that way of building. So we've set ourselves the standard of allowing everyone to see our code. And the benefit of that is that anyone can join in and give us real time feedback. So, if there are, um so, so we actually welcome criticism from, from, from our um either competitors or community members. And if there's anything we're not doing that is adhering to our our own higher standards, then, you know, we, we would very much welcome that criticism really. So um so, so I think, you know that this open source movement is something that scroll is um hopefully at, at the forefront of um in its practice and hopefully more projects will benefit from this particular way of protocol building, Sandy. Uh Your other co-founder will be coming for a consensus. Uh Yes. So um will be at consensus and he will be sharing a little bit about our technical road map about our um decentralized approval network and the planning and um and, and many, many more things. All right. OK. Thanks so much for that, Sandy. Uh uh much appreciated you coming on. We don't appreciate that you will not be a consensus, but we'll let you go. No worries. Just said the other coo we're OK with that. Uh It's not too late also. Uh Just yes, of course, please. Uh It's, it's not too late also to buy your tickets at consensus uh dot Coindesk dot com. Uh You can totally go out there and buy your tickets
Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk’s longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to coindesk.consensus.com to register and buy your pass now.