After falling into the rabbit hole of Web3's magnificence and fantasy for so long, the public seems to have habitually overlooked one point: essentially, we live in a world supported by hardware, whether it is the Metaverse's demand for VR devices, or the CPU and GPU consumption behind AI, or even the ZK track regarded by Vitalik Buterin as the "future of Ethereum".
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Although ZK has rigorous mathematical logic and has significant advantages in security, privacy and scalability, ZK currently has low efficiency problems in proof generation. At a time when breakthrough progress cannot be achieved at the algorithm level, ZK hardware acceleration has become an endowment. Can ZK develop the most direct and effective solution. Vitalik also mentioned when attending the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival in April this year: ZK hardware acceleration will help improve the efficiency and security of Ethereum to a new level.
As the potential of the ZK hardware acceleration track is increasingly valued, the ZK hardware acceleration project Cysic, which will be launched on the test network in mid-July, has attracted widespread attention: Cysic will carry out a series of community incentive activities in stages after the launch of this test network. At this stage, Cysic will invite users to become validators through the whitelist mechanism, participate in network testing and receive corresponding rewards; in the future, Cysic will also open some prover roles to the community.
As one of the earliest leading projects in the ZK hardware acceleration track, Cysic has previously completed a $6 million seed round of financing and a $12 million Pre-A round of financing, attracting participation from a number of well-known VCs in the industry including Polychain Capital, Hashkey Capital, OKX Ventures, ABCDE, and has obtained support from multiple angel investors including DAO5 partner and Celestia's first investor George Lambeth, and former Binance Labs executive director Ken Li.
Taking advantage of the testnet launch, we had an in-depth exchange with Cysic co-founder Leo Fan to discuss Cysic's insights on ZK and hardware acceleration, project advantages and implementation logic, and the prospects for large-scale application of ZK. During the exchange, Leo Fan said: ZK hardware acceleration will greatly empower Ethereum, the crypto industry, and even the real world. With the development of ZKVM and the upcoming shipment of Cysic ASIC hardware, we have reason to be optimistic that ZK technology will achieve real large-scale adoption in 2025.
In this issue, let us walk into the past, present and future of Cysic, and share with us what Cysic co-founder Leo Fan sees, thinks and feels about the ZK hardware acceleration track.
Key points
With the advent of the testnet in mid-July, a series of incentive activities are also being prepared: Cysic will invite users to become validators through a whitelist mechanism, participate in testing and win rewards, and we will also open some prover roles to the community in the later stage of the testnet. For B-side users, Cysic aims to provide efficient, low-cost, and instant ZK services to ZK project parties, and professional miners can also access the Cysic network to achieve more efficient use of hardware equipment. For C-side users, ordinary laptops can also access the Cysic network to become validators.
As a leading project in the ZK hardware acceleration track, the focus of the Cysic project can be summarized into three aspects: efficiency, achieving real-time proof generation through self-developed chips; universality, providing acceleration services for almost all different types of ZK algorithms on the market; decentralization, building the ZK DePIN Network to provide services to the industry in a decentralized manner.
The advantage of ZK is that it does not require trusting specific people, but rather building trust through mathematical logic. In addition, compared to other expansion solutions, the entire Ethereum architecture is more friendly to the development of ZK, and ZK's rigorous mathematical logic also provides a higher level of security and fairness for Ethereum.
In Cysic, project owners have the autonomy to choose appropriate Provers based on their own needs, further improving the degree of decentralization.
Whether in terms of cost-effectiveness or performance-to-power ratio, ASIC is far ahead. However, due to problems such as tape-out errors that may occur during the ASIC design and production process, which will lead to high costs, everyone is more cautious about the design and manufacture of ASIC.
Cysic adopts a dual-token economic model: Native Token has uses such as gas fees and rewarding ecosystem contributors, and veToken can participate in network computing power scheduling decisions through governance.
With the development of ZKVM and the shipment of Cysic ASIC hardware, ZK technology may achieve true mass adoption in 2025.
The fastest ZK hardware acceleration service in the industry, Cysic testnet is coming soon
TechFlow: First, please introduce yourself.
Leo Fan：
Hello everyone, I am Leo Fan, co-founder of Cysic.
Let me first share my educational experience, which mainly revolves around cryptography and computer security: I studied mathematics at Sichuan University for my undergraduate degree, and continued my master's studies at the Beijing National Key Laboratory of Information Security from 2010 to 2014. After that, I entered Cornell University to study cryptography and information security and received my Ph.D. in 2019.
Then I will share my work experience: During my graduate studies in Beijing, I came into contact with Bitcoin and participated in the early mining of Bitcoin. After that, during my doctoral studies, I also had several internships in companies such as IBM and Yahoo. After graduation, I first joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States to work on cryptographic standardization, and then joined the Layer 1 project Algorand, which was founded by ZK technology inventor, Turing Award winner and MIT professor Silvio Micali. I was mainly responsible for the design and implementation of Algorand State Proofs in Algorand, and was committed to bringing trustless interoperability to the Algorand ecosystem.
Until 2022, I found that the generation time of ZK proof was very long. Initially, I wanted to optimize it through algorithms and software, but the effect was not very obvious, so I thought of accelerating the proof generation through hardware methods. Thus, Cysic was born, which aims to realize ZK real-time proof generation through hardware acceleration.
TechFlow: The Cysic testnet will be launched in mid-July. Could you please share with us: From the perspectives of B-end and C-end, how should current project parties, users or developers participate in the Cysic ecosystem?
Leo Fan：
From the B-side perspective, Cysic aims to provide efficient, low-cost, and instant ZK services to ZK projects. Currently, Cysic has launched an Early Access Program (EAP) to provide enterprise-level end-to-end hardware acceleration solutions for ZK projects with computing power requirements. Cysic supports a range of multi-verification systems, including Halo2, STARK, Groth16, Plonky2, ZAMA, GKR, and RapidSnark. Our powerful network is supported by more than 10,000 GPU cards to ensure unparalleled performance and reliability. Currently, 16 projects including Scroll, Light protocol, Risc Zero, Inference Labs, Ion Protocol, Aerius Labs, and TalusNetworkEAP have joined the EAP program, and early members will also enjoy a series of ecological rights in the future.
In addition, the B-side here can also refer to some professional miners who have a large number of graphics cards. In addition to accessing other networks such as AI DePIN, they can also access the Cysic network in the future. After access, the graphics card will be running full tasks most of the time, which means that the hardware will enter a more efficient use stage. In the later stages of the test network, we will also open the prover role to the community. Users who meet certain hardware conditions can apply to become provers, on the one hand, contributing to the launch of the main network, and on the other hand, receiving test rewards.
From the perspective of C-end users, this may refer to relatively new users who may not have powerful hardware. In this case, they can also access the Cysic network through an ordinary laptop to play the role of a validator, thereby contributing to the ZK ecosystem and receiving rewards. The Cysic testnet will be launched in mid-July, and related testnet incentive activities are also being prepared: by then, we will also invite users to become validators through the whitelist mechanism, participate in network testing and receive corresponding rewards.
TechFlow: If you could only use three words to describe what Cysic is doing, how would you describe it?
Leo Fan：
We believe that after breaking through the efficiency bottleneck, ZK technology will be widely adopted in both the crypto industry and the Web2 real world. Cysic aims to achieve real-time generation of ZK proofs by providing full hardware acceleration services including FPGA, GPU and ASIC, and connect ZK project parties, computing power providers and community verifiers by building the ZK DePIN network Cysic Network, ultimately providing the entire industry with an efficient, cost-effective and decentralized computing power + verification network. In general, Cysic will play an indispensable role in promoting the early large-scale adoption of ZK.
Back to the question, I think what Cysic is doing can be described in the following three words:
Efficiency: Cysic aims to achieve real-time proof generation through self-developed chips. Although we are still in the stage of providing ZK acceleration services for projects through GPUs, we are also the fastest in the entire industry at this stage. In the future, as the project progresses and ASIC is realized, we will be even faster.
Universality: In fact, there are various algorithms within the scope of ZK, and there are differences between different algorithms. Cysic aims to provide ZK acceleration services that support all algorithms for the industry, further expanding our service scope and improving availability.
Decentralization: Cysic is currently building Cysic Network, a ZK DePIN Network. We hope to provide services to the entire ecosystem through decentralized Prover and Verifier. Participants will receive rewards by making corresponding contributions to ZK.
TechFlow: Currently, ZK hardware acceleration solutions mainly include CPU, GPU, FPGA and ASIC. What are the differences between these methods? Which method does Cysic prefer to implement ZK hardware acceleration?
Leo Fan：
In fact, Cysic has a say in this issue. There is a competition for ZK hardware acceleration called ZPrize. Cysic missed the first ZPrize, but is the designer and judge of one of the tracks in this year's competition.
In the entire ZK or the entire hardware field, there are three important indicators:
The first is Performance Per Dollar: how much does it cost to purchase the corresponding hardware, how much does it cost to get this computing power? Since the CPU performance cannot catch up with other solutions, the hardware acceleration we discuss is mainly GPU, FPGA and ASIC. From the perspective of cost performance: ASIC> GPU> FPGA, this is when the ASIC shipment volume is large enough, and the current ZK can meet this shipment volume condition.
The second indicator is Performance Per Watt: the energy consumption of running these hardware. In this regard, ASIC still leads by a large margin, while GPU is slightly better than FPGA.
The last indicator is Go to Market Time: We know that ASIC needs to design chips, and tape-out is an important part of the ASIC chip design process. The generated mask needs to be sent to the wafer fab for chip manufacturing. If there are some mistakes in the tape-out process, it will lead to high costs, so everyone is currently cautious about the design and manufacturing of ASIC.
The same is true for Cysic in the short term. From the end of last year to the beginning of 2025, we will provide acceleration services through GPUs, but our ASICs will probably be available in the second or third quarter of next year, when we will switch to providing ASIC services. This is an inevitable process. Cysic is committed to achieving real-time ZK proof generation. For the current mainstream ZK Circuit, we hope that our proof time can achieve a speed of 1-5 seconds. To achieve this goal, only ASIC can achieve it.
TechFlow: How does Cysic achieve real-time proof generation? What changes or innovations will this bring to ZK, Ethereum, and even the entire crypto industry?
Leo Fan：
I think this will definitely bring about great innovation. Let's take the combination of ZK and machine learning as an example. Currently, if you want to use ZK to run a machine learning circuit, it will be very time-consuming: if you run a GPT2, it will take about one second without ZK, but if you want to use ZK to prove a GPT2 circuit, even the fastest solution will take several minutes, and it will take several hours if you use the CPU. Such a long time will not give you any user experience.
Cysic's ASIC chip will be able to achieve real-time ZK proof generation, which not only promotes the combination of ZK and machine learning technology, but also brings a good experience to users. Of course, the combination of Crypto and AI is also very close now, so this example is also a very Crypto Native example.
In addition, I think ZK acceleration is also a great enabler for Ethereum and the entire crypto industry. The biggest change is that things that previously took more than ten minutes to complete can be shortened to a few seconds. More transactions on L2 and cross-chain transactions can be confirmed faster, and this confirmation is based on mathematical logic, rather than the assumption of "innocent until proven guilty" like OP. This is a huge improvement for the crypto industry.
Realize real-time generation of ZK proofs in a decentralized manner, and the dual-token model incentivizes the ZK DePIN network
TechFlow: In previous solutions, it was always difficult to balance efficiency and decentralization. Cysic not only achieves real-time proof generation, but also decentralizes the verifier/prover. Can you briefly introduce to us how Cysic achieves this? How does the PoC consensus adopted by Cysic further improve the degree of decentralization?
Leo Fan：
As mentioned in the previous question, there are two important roles in the ZK DePIN network Cysic Network built by Cysic: prover and verifier.
The verifier is responsible for verifying the proof generated by the prover. Decentralization of the verifier is relatively easy because even mobile phones, laptops, and tablets can participate in verifying a ZK proof. It has very low hardware requirements and the verification time is usually less than one second.
Decentralization of provers is difficult in the early stage (that is, the GPU era), because if you want to provide a good user experience, that is to say, the time for proof generation is relatively short, which means that the prover needs to meet higher hardware requirements, which is a certain threshold for many people. However, when Cysic's hardware starts to ship, this situation will be greatly alleviated, because compared with the current mainstream GPU acceleration, Cysic's hardware can increase the efficiency of ZK acceleration by up to ten times, and the price is relatively cheap. Everyone can buy Cysic's hardware at a lower cost to reach the level of professional miners.
From a software perspective, Cysic is currently working on a ZK DePIN network. We have designed a PoC (Proof of compute) mechanism to better suit the ZK DePIN scenario. PoC is actually more like a combination of Proof of Stake and Proof of Work. For each epoch, there are about 100 blocks. A group of nodes are selected based on the computing power scale of the prover, and then the staking weight of this group of nodes is used to decide who will propose the blocks in this epoch. This not only ensures that the network is in a stable state, but will also further enhance the degree of decentralization.
TechFlow: We noticed that Cysic has adopted a dual-token model design that combines utility tokens and governance tokens. Can you tell us about the advantages of the dual-token design and how Cysic achieves effective governance and incentives for the ecosystem through dual tokens?
Leo Fan：
In the dual token model: one is Native Token and the other is veToken.
Native Token is mainly used for gas fees, rewarding ecosystem contributors, etc., but if participants want to participate in governance and decide on the distribution of network computing power, they need to pledge Cysic's Token to obtain corresponding voting rights.
We know that ZK has many projects, and many different projects adopt different algorithms, so how to schedule the computing power in the Cysic network becomes crucial. If the computing power is well scheduled, it will bring high returns to the Cysic network, and thus better empower network participants. Having voting rights is equivalent to having the right to participate in the scheduling of computing power. For example, if a project has performed very well recently, should we provide more computing power? Through such a mechanism, it is not only more conducive to capturing the value of the entire ZK ecosystem, but also Cysic's Token can be better circulated in the entire ZK ecosystem.
TechFlow: The hardware requirements of ZK hardware acceleration service easily remind people of the DePIN track. What are the extensions of Cysic ecosystem construction in DePIN?
Leo Fan：
We hope that more hardware will join the Cysic network. It is worth noting that these hardware in the Cysic network are not simply running idle, but are actually running services to create value through proof generation and verification. This is the biggest difference between us and many AI and DePIN projects. Currently, the Cysic network is in the internal testing stage, and hundreds of servers are always running full of tasks.
In addition, the Cysic network also has some impact on traditional users. Because of ZK's advantages in privacy computing, we will also provide traditional users with better services through the DePIN network.
TechFlow: Whether at last year's EDCON Montenegro or this year's Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin clearly expressed the view that "ZK is the future of Ethereum." Why is Vitalik so optimistic about ZK? What do you think are the advantages of ZK technology and its empowerment for Ethereum compared to other expansion solutions?
Leo Fan：
I think the reasons are twofold:
First of all, ZK does not need to trust a specific person. Unlike the trust mechanism of OP, which is based on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty", ZK's trust is based on rigorous mathematical logic. Moreover, ZK technology has been developed for 30 to 40 years, and this cryptographic system based on mathematical assumptions is becoming more and more complete. Therefore, compared with other solutions, it is safer to put trust in mathematics.
Secondly, compared with other expansion solutions, the entire Ethereum architecture is more friendly to the development of ZK. After a proof is generated using ZK, it can be quickly verified in Ethereum, and the generated ZK proof can be a block of L2, which may correspond to 1,000 transactions. In other words, verifying a ZK proof on Ethereum is equivalent to verifying 1,000 transactions. Without changing too much of the underlying Ethereum, ZK is a better expansion solution.
Finally, let’s talk about the empowerment of ZK technology for Ethereum: I think the rapid development of ZK has first greatly improved the settlement time of Ethereum through L2; secondly, through ZK Bridge, Ethereum can avoid many security vulnerabilities while improving efficiency; in addition, ZK also has a great empowerment on how Ethereum itself generates blocks. ZK has a Verifiable Delay Function module that uses rigorous mathematical functions to generate random numbers, and will also generate corresponding ZK proofs to verify that the Delay Function is calculated properly, which is a good guarantee for the security and fairness of Ethereum.
TechFlow: In the face of the current inefficiency of ZK, Vitalik has also focused on three solutions, namely: 1. Parallelization and aggregation trees; 2. Using SNARK algos and hashing to improve efficiency; 3. Using ASICs for ZK hardware acceleration. Cysic is a project focusing on the ZK hardware acceleration track. What do you think are the advantages of ZK hardware compared to the other two solutions?
Leo Fan：
In fact, there is a cooperative relationship between the first parallelization and aggregation tree solution and the third ZK hardware acceleration solution. The parallelization and aggregation tree solution is actually either Parallel EVM (parallel EVM) or aggregation and batch verification of proofs. Hardware acceleration can actually speed up this process.
The second solution is to use SNARK algos and hashing to improve efficiency. SNARK (Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) is actually ZK. What we accelerate is SNARK. There are many parameters in the SNARK of many projects. If the parameters are set more aggressively, it will have a certain impact on security. The advantage of ZK hardware acceleration is that it can achieve acceleration without shaking the security chassis.
With the support of ZKVM and the shipment of Cysic’s self-developed hardware, ZK may see large-scale adoption in 2025
TechFlow: Recently, the ZK trend has reached Solana. The privacy protocol Light Protocol has proposed a new primitive for Solana: ZK Compression, which is committed to enabling native ZK computing on Solana and reducing the token and account management fees on Solana by several orders of magnitude. What do you think of ZK Compression? What opportunities and challenges do you think this will bring to Cysic's ZK hardware acceleration track?
Leo Fan:
ZK compression is a recently emerged ZK technology on Solana. It mainly uses the simplicity of ZK to reduce the state, thereby reducing overhead. The same technology is also used in ZK-L2 and ZK bridge. For Cysic, the core of this technology is no different from the technology currently developed by Cysic. It’s just that the existing technology of Cysic can provide good support for ZK applications in a new scenario (Solana).
TechFlow: How long do you think it will take for ZK technology to be widely adopted in specific scenarios? What are the important opportunities to promote this vision?
Leo Fan：
I think the arrival of large-scale adoption of ZK may be next year, and it will not only be limited to the crypto industry, but will be truly applied in many scenarios. This is mainly due to two opportunities:
First of all, in terms of software, Cysic is very concerned about the development of ZKVM. ZKVM aims to help developers so that they no longer need to write a lot of ZK circuits. Instead, they can directly write corresponding RUST or Go projects, and then use ZKVM to turn them into ZK circuits. This greatly improves the development speed of ZK and lowers the threshold for ZK software development. Cysic will also continue to explore and launch better solutions in terms of software.
On the other hand, Cysic's self-developed hardware will be shipped next year, which will greatly improve the efficiency of ZK proof generation, thus becoming a key force in promoting the large-scale adoption of ZK technology.
TechFlow: Can you share with us the major progress Cysic has made recently and what will be the focus of Cysic's work in the second half of 2024?
Leo Fan：
Cysic has made many breakthroughs in the past year: By the end of 2023, the team roughly determined the development direction of ZK chip design. Our previous work may have only accelerated a relatively large module. At the end of last year, we determined the design direction of ZK chips based on ZKVM, which made our hardware product form very flexible. We will have two products:
ZK Air will be a product for ordinary users. It is a lightweight and portable ZK DePIN device that is close to the size of a Macbook charger. It can be connected to a mobile phone or computer via Type-C to achieve efficient ZK proof. ZK Air provides computing power greater than that of top consumer graphics cards, comparable to 10 RTX 4090s.
ZK Pro can accelerate ZK proof production 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 50 Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics cards.
In addition, in terms of GPU, we have developed the corresponding general code ourselves, which is a significant improvement over CPU and nearly twice as fast as the open source solutions on the market. Before ASIC is available to everyone, we aim to provide the industry with better ZK hardware acceleration services through GPU and other solutions.
In the coming 2024, the Cysic testnet will be launched in mid-July, and the mainnet may be launched in the third quarter. Most of the development work has been completed, and we are continuing to carry out stress testing and other work.