According to ChainCatcher news, Web3 industry research and analysis platform Web3Caff Research recently released an in-depth report on the ZKP hardware acceleration project Cysic. Web3Caff Research researcher Bob pointed out in the report that zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) has a history of nearly 40 years and is widely used in blockchain privacy protection and layer-two scaling. However, due to high computational resource consumption and slow verification speed, user growth is limited. Therefore, hardware acceleration has become a key solution. FPGA and GPU have implemented several ZKP products, while the higher-performing ASIC is considered the industry’s "Mount Everest" due to high costs and uncertainties. Currently, Cysic is the only team developing ZKP ASIC, can it leverage a market worth billions?
The report further points out that ZKP is one of the core technologies of Web3, and ZKP hardware acceleration is still in its infancy. Compared to Cysic, both the current industry's operation of open-source code libraries to accelerate GPUs and the establishment of FPGA clusters are still in the early trial-and-error stage. Cysic offers a user-friendly ZKP acceleration solution and is currently the only product open for testing and pushing to the market, with its test network having entered Phase 2. Its performance is claimed to be 5 to 10 times faster than GPU acceleration, with plans to launch the mainnet by the end of 2024. In addition, Cysic's ZK-ASIC hardware products have garnered significant attention, with two models expected to be launched in 2025, targeting both enterprise (B-end) and consumer (C-end) markets. Despite skepticism about ZK-ASIC within the industry, from a long-term development perspective, introducing ASIC to establish a ZKP "mining" model could be a key step in promoting ecosystem development.