In the mid-19th century, the California Gold Rush created one wealth-making myth after another. Sam Brannan, who sold gold mining tools and equipment, became the first millionaire in California. Levi's, which sells jeans, has become a century-old brand with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. In addition, companies that provide catering and financial services in the local area have also made a lot of money.

History repeats itself, and the same scene is staged again a hundred years later. The rise of crypto mining has also created a large number of wealth stories. Crypto mining has brought billions of dollars in revenue to Nvidia, and Bitmain, which mainly sells mining machines, is valued at nearly $15 billion.

Of course, the wealth-making myth of crypto mining has not stopped, and a large number of investment institutions and companies are looking for the next outlet.

In 2022, top venture capital firm Paradigm published an article stating that the market size of ZK acceleration is expected to be comparable to the market size of PoW mining, reaching tens of billions of dollars.

Recently, Ethereum founder Vitalik mentioned in his keynote speech "Reaching the Limits of Protocol Design" at the Web3 Carnival in Hong Kong that hardware acceleration of ZK calculations with the efficient hash processing speed of ASIC chips will help to bring Ethereum's efficiency and security to a new level.

Cysic is one of the leading projects in the ZK hardware acceleration track, and its first product for individual and commercial users is expected to be launched in 2025. At the same time, Cysic will integrate a large number of community verification nodes based on chip computing power + community GPU computing power, and finally build Cysic Network to provide a trusted integrated computing power + verification network for the entire industry.

Cysic, the leader in ZK DePIN hardware acceleration and computing power network

Cysic is the first real-time ZK proof generation and verification layer in the Ethereum roadmap. On the basis of providing top hardware, Cysic will also provide computing power network services. The hardware solutions provided by Cysic can accelerate computing tasks in the DePIN network. At the same time, the Cysic computing network service will provide a solid foundation for collaboration between project parties, computing power providers, and community validators in the DePIN ecosystem.

Cysic's self-developed FPGA, ASIC, CUDA SDK, etc. provide the ZK project with the most powerful and efficient hardware acceleration solutions in the entire network. In the current roadmap, Cysic will release two flagship products, ZK AIR and ZK PRO, and may start pre-sales of mining machines in the near future.

ZK Air will be a product for ordinary users. It is a lightweight and portable ZK DePIN device with a size close to that of a laptop power supply. It provides computing power greater than that of top consumer graphics cards. The computing power of ZK Air is comparable to that of 10 RTX 4090. Users can connect ZK Air to a computer or mobile device to provide acceleration services for ZK Proof.

ZK Pro can accelerate the production of ZK proofs to the greatest extent, calculate ZK proofs for users in real time, and is designed similarly to traditional mining machines. ZK Pro is more suitable for large-scale ZK projects, such as zkRollup, zkML and other scenarios. In terms of performance, ZK Pro has achieved a huge improvement over Air. According to Cysic's official disclosure, its computing power is comparable to that of 50 Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics cards.

Cysic has not only made breakthroughs in hardware, but is also committed to building a software ecosystem. Cysic Network is a community network that Cysic will launch in the future, aiming to integrate and dispatch community resources, connect ZK project parties, computing power providers and community validators. This network will integrate Cysic's own GPU, ZK DePIN device computing power and third-party computing power to create a complete, reliable and stable computing power network. After accessing Cysic Network, third-party computing power providers will be able to enjoy the best computing power revenue sharing. At the same time, by accessing Cysic Network, ZK project parties can obtain the most reliable and robust computing power support in a timely manner.

ZK is important, but it is currently limited by processing speed

Vitalik mentioned in his speech at the Web3 Carnival in Hong Kong that before, blockchain brought many benefits, providing openness and global verifiability, but at the expense of privacy and security. Nowadays, almost everything is starting to be built on ZK (zero-knowledge proof), starting multi-party computing and fully homomorphic encryption.

ZK dates back to the 1980s and is a technology that allows a prover to prove to a verifier that a statement is true without revealing any additional information. This shows that personal information can be protected even in an environment where shared proofs are required. In the crypto world, through ZK, users can trade on a public blockchain while hiding the specific details of the transaction, such as the amount, the identity of the participants, etc.

ZK is now widely used in addition to privacy factors, but also because it can significantly improve TPS on various blockchain platforms.

Nevertheless, ZK still has its limitations. Any computation that wants to be proven by a ZKP needs to be converted from a traditional program to a ZK-friendly format. This conversion process may require manually rewriting the code to adapt to low-level libraries like Arkworks, or using domain-specific languages like Cairo or Circom, which can compile to the basic primitives needed to generate proofs. This step itself is a time-consuming project because it requires developers to deeply understand the inner workings of ZKP and apply them to actual computational tasks.

At the same time, more expensive and complex operations will lead to longer proof generation time. Some operations are not ZK-friendly, such as the bitwise operations used in SHA-3, which may be cheap on traditional computers, but lead to long proof generation in ZK.

From GPU to FPGA and ASIC

For ZK, the proof generation process may vary depending on the proof system, but the bottlenecks are usually in the multiplication of large digital vectors and number theoretic transforms (NTT) and inverse number theoretic transforms. The multiplication of large digital vectors is mainly two specific types of multiplication, variable radix and fixed radix multi-scalar multiplication (MSM).

In the computational process of ZK proof generation, MSM-type computation tasks usually account for 60-70%, and the rest is made up of NTT-type computations. It is worth noting that both MSM and NTT are parallelizable operations, which means they can be accelerated by running on multiple threads.

Cysic has made a breakthrough in the MSM acceleration solution based on Xilinx public version FPGAs and named it SolarMSM. In the proof of concept (POC), SolarMSM was able to accelerate the 2³⁰-scale MSM computing task to only 195 milliseconds. For the Scroll-level MSM computing, Cysic's processing time is only about 1 millisecond. This result is at the strongest level among all public data in the industry, and is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than the performance of the champion of the ZPrize competition.

Based on the success of SolarMSM, Cysic has also completed the design of the NTT computing acceleration module SolarNTT. Facing the Scroll-level NTT computing, Cysic's solution also only takes about 1 millisecond of computing time.

SolarNTT and SolarMSM will be deployed on the same server and accelerated computing based on the same large-scale FPGA interconnection system. Cysic calls this overall acceleration solution SolarZKP and plans to provide API services through the SaaS model.

It is worth noting that in the ZK field, Partial Acceleration and End to End Acceleration are two different hardware acceleration methods. Partial acceleration refers to the acceleration of some specific computing modules, such as NTT and MSM. End to end acceleration mainly accelerates all computing processes and reduces the data interaction overhead between modules. Partial acceleration is often not as good as end to end acceleration because of the data communication problem between the acceleration module and other modules. Cysic's FPGA MSM solution has evolved from partial acceleration to end to end acceleration.

In terms of design and development strategy, Cysic follows the principle of giving equal importance to economy and technology, rather than the way of big force flying bricks.

Cysic has taken a development path similar to that of Bitcoin mining machines, starting with GPUs, and then launching FPGA products after FPGAs surpass GPUs in performance per unit dollar and performance per unit energy consumption. At the same time, considering that different projects may adopt different ZK proof systems, Cysic is also designing ASICs and is expected to launch mining machines in 2025.

According to the official statement, SolarMSM's advantages will be maintained until the advent of ASIC mining machines. This also means that Cysic is undoubtedly the leader in the current market.

Integrated computing power and ZK+DePIN verification network

As Paradigm pointed out, the potential value of the ZK acceleration market will exceed tens of billions of dollars. The market is currently in its early stages of development. From historical experience, now is the best time to lay out the upstream and downstream of the industry, empower the industry, and expand the scope of business.

Cysic's vision is not limited to providing hardware acceleration. It also focuses on building an integrated computing power and verification network, fully integrating community resources, and providing trusted services to the entire industry. Cysic actively embraces the power of the community. Cysic Network is a community network launched by Cysic that is similar to a mining pool.

Cysic Network integrates various hardware computing power that can be used for ZK acceleration, including Cysic's own GPU, Cysic ZK DePIN device computing power and third-party computing power, to build a complete, reliable and stable computing power network. Cysic Network will serve as a bridge to connect ZK project parties, computing power providers and community validators.

ZK project parties can obtain the most reliable and robust computing power in a timely manner by connecting to Cysic Network. Whether it is transaction verification or smart contract execution, these project parties can rely on the hardware acceleration services provided by Cysic. As an ordinary user, you can not only purchase Cysic's ZK Air or ZK Pro to provide computing power support for Cysic Network, but also become a community validator. Community validators use their own computers or mobile phones to verify the correctness of ZKProof generation. This decentralized verification method not only helps the development of the community, but also obtains validator rewards.

As the largest and most decentralized ZK+DePIN network, Cysic Network connects ZK computing resources, validators, and ZK developers. With the support of more than 10,000 GPU cards, Cysic provides enterprise-level ZK computing as a service to create a trustless future.

Team from prestigious universities, supported by Polychain

Cysic was founded by Leo and Bowen Huang in August 2022.

Leo is responsible for system architecture and cryptography research at Cysic. He graduated from Sichuan University and obtained a master's degree in computer science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and then went to Cornell University to pursue a doctorate in computer science. While in school, he also worked as a researcher at IC3, Yahoo, Bell Labs, and IBM. After graduation, he joined Algorand to be responsible for cryptography research. Currently, he is also an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University.

Bowen Huang received a master's degree from Yale University after Quit, a doctorate from Yale University. He is currently mainly responsible for chip and supply chain management at Cysic. Previously, he worked as a research engineer at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In February 2023, Cysic completed a $6 million seed round of financing led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hashkey, ABCDE, SNZ Holding, Web3.com Venture, A&T, IDG, Jingwei, and George Lambeth. George Lambeth is also an investor in Arbitrum and Celestia, and received 348 times and 1882 times returns respectively.

ZK proof system is complex, and the proof system used by Cysic covers multiple systems such as Halo2, RapidSnark, Plonky2x, etc. At present, Cysic has reached cooperation with many projects such as Scroll, Herodotus, Arch Network, Kakarot, Risc0, Talus, Kinetex, Holonym, etc., covering various types of projects such as ZK Rollup, ZKML, application layer, etc.

The well-known ZK Layer2 solution zkSync, which is valued at up to $2 billion, once claimed that ZK technology is the ultimate solution for blockchain technology (ZK is the Endgame). Ethereum's development blueprint has clearly shown that its future will be deeply dependent on ZK technology. This indicates that from transaction verification to the execution of smart contracts, ZK technology will become an indispensable core part of the Ethereum ecosystem. This comprehensive "ZKization" will greatly improve the processing speed and efficiency of Ethereum, while expanding its application to more fields on the basis of ensuring privacy and security.

Vitalik has also emphasized the importance of ZK technology on many public occasions, and has clearly expressed his optimism about the prospects of ZK hardware acceleration.

Since Paradigm published the relevant article, the market size of the ZK field has reached the expected level of tens of billions of dollars in the past two years. In this track, the valuation of many leading projects has exceeded 1 billion US dollars. Cysic's growth is inseparable from its capture of the value of ZK ecological projects. The increase in ZK projects has directly promoted the increase in Cysic's usage rate. This also means that Cysic's valuation potential will be affected by the scale of the entire track.

Today, ZK hardware mining and DePIN are on the eve of an explosion. At this moment, just as Bitmain was established, Bitcoin mining has entered a period of great explosion. Users who missed Bitcoin mining may wish to try ZK mining.

References:

https://www.paradigm.xyz/2022/04/zk-hardware

https://hackmd.io/@Cysic/BJQcpVbXn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiong-leo-fan-76292249/

https://medium.com/@ABCDE.com/cn-abcde-%E4%B8%BA%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E6%88%91%E4%BB%AC%E8%A6%81%E6%8A%95%E8%B5%84cysic-e171a6101fef

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