In the mid-19th century, the California Gold Rush created numerous wealth myths. Sam Brannan, who sold gold mining tools and equipment, became California’s first millionaire. Levi’s, which sold jeans, has become a century-old brand with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. Additionally, companies that provided local dining and financial services also profited handsomely.

History repeats itself, with a similar scenario unfolding a century later. The rise of crypto mining has similarly created numerous wealth stories. Crypto mining has contributed billions of dollars in revenue to NVIDIA, and Bitmain, which specializes in mining machine sales, is valued at nearly $15 billion.

Of course, the wealth myths of crypto mining have not stopped, and many investment institutions and enterprises are looking for the next big trend.

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

Recently, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin mentioned in his keynote speech “Reaching the Limits of Protocol Design” at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival that leveraging the high-efficiency hash processing speed of ASIC chips for ZK computation hardware acceleration could elevate Ethereum’s efficiency and security to a new level.

Cysic is one of the leading projects in the ZK hardware acceleration track. Its first product, aimed at both individual and commercial users, is expected to be launched in 2025. Cysic will integrate chip-based computing power with community GPU computing power, incorporating a massive number of community validation nodes to ultimately build the Cysic Network, offering a reliable, all-in-one compute power and validation network for the entire industry.

Cysic: The Leader in ZK DePIN Hardware Acceleration and Compute Power Networks

Cysic is the first real-time ZK proof generation and verification layer in the Ethereum roadmap. Beyond providing top-notch hardware, Cysic also offers compute power network services. Their hardware solutions accelerate computational tasks within DePIN networks. Furthermore, Cysic’s compute power network services provide a robust foundation for collaboration between project teams, compute power providers, and community validators within the DePIN ecosystem.

Cysic’s self-developed FPGA, ASIC, CUDA SDK, and other technologies offer the most powerful and efficient hardware acceleration solutions for ZK projects across the entire network. According to their current roadmap, Cysic plans to release two flagship products, ZK AIR and ZK PRO, with pre-sales for mining machines possibly starting soon.

ZK AIR is designed for general users. This lightweight, portable ZK DePIN device is about the size of a laptop power adapter but delivers computing power exceeding that of top-tier consumer GPUs. The ZK AIR’s computing power is comparable to that of ten RTX 4090 GPUs. Users can connect the ZK AIR to their computers or mobile devices to provide accelerated ZK Proof services.

ZK PRO is designed to maximize ZK proof production speed, making it ideal for large ZK projects such as zkRollup and zkML. Resembling traditional mining machines, the ZK PRO offers significantly enhanced performance compared to the ZK AIR. According to Cysic’s official disclosures, the ZK PRO’s computing power is equivalent to that of fifty NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPUs.

Cysic has not only made breakthroughs in hardware but is also committed to building a software ecosystem. The upcoming Cysic Network is a community network designed to integrate and manage community resources, connecting ZK project teams, computing power providers, and community validators. This network will combine Cysic’s own GPU, ZK DePIN device computing power, and third-party computing power to create a complete, reliable, and stable computing power network. Third-party computing power providers joining the Cysic Network will benefit from optimal computing power revenue sharing. At the same time, ZK project teams will receive the most reliable and stable computing power support through the Cysic Network.

ZK (Zero-Knowledge) is crucial but currently limited by processing speed

Vitalik mentioned during his speech at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival that while blockchain has previously offered many benefits such as openness and global verifiability, it has often sacrificed privacy and security. Today, almost everything is beginning to build on ZK (zero-knowledge proofs), incorporating multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption.

ZK technology, which dates back to the 1980s, allows a prover to demonstrate to a verifier that a statement is true without revealing any additional information. This means that even in environments where proofs need to be shared, personal information can be protected. In the crypto world, ZK allows users to conduct transactions on public blockchains while concealing specific details like transaction amounts and participant identities.

Besides its privacy advantages, ZK is widely used today because it can significantly improve the TPS (transactions per second) on various blockchain platforms.

However, ZK still has its limitations. Any computation that needs to be proven via ZKP must be converted from traditional programming formats into ZK-friendly formats. This conversion process may require manually rewriting code to fit low-level libraries like Arkworks or using domain-specific languages such as Cairo or Circom, which can compile into basic primitives necessary for proof generation. This step is inherently time-consuming as it demands developers to have an in-depth understanding of the internal workings of ZKP and apply it to practical computational tasks.

Additionally, more expensive and complex operations can extend proof generation times. Some operations, like the bitwise operations used in SHA-3, are inexpensive on traditional computers but result in long proof generation times in ZK contexts.

From GPU to FPGA and ASIC

In the context of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proof systems, the proving process can differ depending on the system used, but bottlenecks typically occur in the multiplication of large numerical vectors and the Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) and its inverse. The multiplication of large numerical vectors mainly involves two specific types of multiplications: variable-base and fixed-base multi-scalar multiplication (MSM).

During the computation process of ZK proof generation, MSM tasks typically account for 60-70% of the workload, with the remaining portion constituted by NTT computations. It’s noteworthy that both MSM and NTT are parallelizable operations, meaning they can be accelerated by running on multiple threads.

Cysic has made significant advancements in MSM acceleration based on Xilinx public FPGA and has named this solution SolarMSM. In the proof of concept (POC), SolarMSM was able to accelerate an MSM computation task of scale 2³⁰ to just 195 milliseconds. For Scroll-level MSM computations, Cysic’s processing time is approximately 1 millisecond. This performance is among the best in the industry, outperforming the champion performance of the ZPrize competition by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

Building on the success of SolarMSM, Cysic has also completed the design of an NTT acceleration module, SolarNTT. For Scroll-level NTT computations, Cysic’s solution also requires only about 1 millisecond of computation time.

SolarNTT and SolarMSM will be deployed on the same server, accelerated by the same large-scale FPGA interconnection system. Cysic refers to this overall acceleration solution as SolarZKP and plans to offer API services through a SaaS model.

It’s important to note that in the ZK field, Partial Acceleration and End to End Acceleration are two distinct hardware acceleration methods. Partial acceleration refers to speeding up specific computation modules such as NTT and MSM. End to end acceleration involves speeding up the entire computation process and reducing data interaction overhead between modules. Due to the data communication issues between accelerated and non-accelerated modules, partial acceleration often yields less improvement compared to end to end acceleration. Cysic’s FPGA MSM solution has evolved from partial acceleration to end to end acceleration.

In terms of design and development strategy, Cysic follows a principle that balances both economic and technical aspects, rather than a brute-force approach.

Cysic has adopted a development path similar to Bitcoin miners, starting with GPUs and moving to FPGA products once the performance per dollar and performance per watt of FPGAs surpass that of GPUs. Additionally, considering that different projects may employ different ZK proof systems, Cysic is also working on ASIC design, with plans to launch a miner by 2025.

According to official statements, the advantages of SolarMSM will be maintained until the advent of ASIC miners. This also means that Cysic is undoubtedly the current market leader.

Integrated Computing Power and ZK+DePIN Verification Network

As noted by Paradigm, 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, and historical experience suggests that now is the best time to invest in the industry’s upstream and downstream sectors, empowering the industry while expanding business scope.

Cysic’s vision is not limited to providing hardware acceleration; it also aims to build an integrated computing power and verification network that fully leverages community resources to provide trustworthy services for the entire industry. Cysic actively embraces the power of the community. The Cysic Network is a community network launched by Cysic, similar to a mining pool.

The Cysic Network integrates various hardware computing powers available for ZK acceleration, including Cysic’s own GPUs, Cysic ZK DePIN device computing power, and third-party computing power, creating a comprehensive, reliable, and stable computing power network. The Cysic Network serves as a bridge connecting ZK project teams, computing power providers, and community validators.

By connecting to the Cysic Network, ZK project teams can promptly obtain the most reliable and robust computing power. Whether it is transaction verification or smart contract execution, these project teams can rely on the hardware acceleration services provided by Cysic. As ordinary users, not only can they purchase Cysic’s ZK Air or ZK Pro to support the Cysic Network with computing power, but they can also become community validators. Community validators use their own computers or phones to verify the correctness of ZKProof generation. This decentralized verification approach not only aids community development but also allows validators to earn rewards.

As the largest and most decentralized ZK+DePIN network, the Cysic Network connects ZK computing resources, validators, and ZK developers. Supported by over 10,000 GPU cards, Cysic provides enterprise-grade ZK computing as a service, building a trustless future.

Prestigious Team 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 before pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at Cornell University. During his studies, he worked as a researcher at IC3, Yahoo, Bell Labs, and IBM. After graduation, he joined Algorand to focus on cryptography research. Currently, he also serves as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University.

Bowen Huang, after quitting his Ph.D. program at Yale University, earned a master’s degree there. He is primarily 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, Matrix Partners, and George Lambeth. George Lambeth, an investor in Arbitrum and Celestia, achieved returns of 348x and 1882x, respectively.

The ZK (Zero-Knowledge) proof systems are complex, and Cysic employs a range of systems, including Halo2, RapidSnark, and Plonky2x. Currently, Cysic has established partnerships with multiple projects such as Scroll, Herodotus, Arch Network, Kakarot, Risc0, Talus, Kinetex, and Holonym, covering various types of projects like ZK Rollup, ZKML, and application layers.

The well-known ZK Layer2 solution zkSync, with a valuation of $2 billion, has claimed that ZK technology is the ultimate solution for blockchain technology (ZK is the Endgame). Ethereum’s development roadmap clearly indicates that its future will heavily rely on ZK technology. This suggests that from transaction verification to the execution of smart contracts, ZK technology will become an indispensable core part of the Ethereum ecosystem. This comprehensive “ZK-ification” will significantly enhance Ethereum’s processing speed and efficiency while expanding its applications to more fields, all while ensuring privacy and security.

Vitalik Buterin has also emphasized the importance of ZK technology in various public forums and has expressed clear optimism about the prospects of ZK hardware acceleration.

Since the publication of related articles by Paradigm, the market size of the ZK field has reached a highly anticipated scale of tens of billions of dollars over the past two years. In this sector, the valuations of several leading projects have exceeded $1 billion. Cysic’s growth is closely tied to its ability to capture the value of ZK ecosystem projects. The increase in ZK projects directly drives the usage rate of Cysic. This also means that Cysic’s valuation potential will be influenced by the overall scale of the sector.

Currently, ZK hardware mining and DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) are on the verge of a breakthrough, similar to the period when Bitmain was founded, leading to a boom in Bitcoin mining. Users who missed out on Bitcoin mining might want to try ZK mining.

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