Abstract: This research intends to reduce the post-earthquake residual inter-story drift, enhance the seismic collapse-resistant capacity and avoid the soft-story failure due to inter-story drift concentration of moment-resisting frame (MRF) through the implementation of self-centering energy-absorbing rocking core (SCENARIO). Based on the continuum distributed parameter model, the influences of moment-resisting stiffness and lateral force-resisting stiffness of SCENARIO on the inter-story drift distribution and capacity of SCENARIO and MRF are studied. This research proposes the displacement-based design method of MRF retrofitted with SCENARIO, and the detailed design procedures are also provided. A three-story MRF is retrofitted with SCENARIO following the proposed design procedure. The results from the static pushover and dynamic analyses indicate that the SCENARIO can efficiently reduce the post-earthquake residual inter-story drift of MRF, and produce a uniform inter-story drift distribution. Moreover, the retrofitted building can achieve the performance objective.