Written by: Haotian
Let’s briefly talk about @heurist_ai, which recently raised $2M in funding. What is its target positioning? How does it differ from other cloud computing aggregation service platforms? What considerations underpin its technical framework based on ZK Stack and elastic chains?
To be honest, I am quite scared to see large and comprehensive 'big' projects in the AI track with extravagant investment lineups. What makes Heurist feel different with its small and focused approach?
1) Heurist is positioned as a decentralized GPU resource aggregation platform, a service direction that everyone is familiar with, as similar AI computing service platforms like @ionet and @AethirCloud have existed. After all, compared to the high costs and inflexible characteristics of cloud services like AWS in the web2 direction, a cloud service platform using an Airbnb model, leveraging web3 token economics and distributed technology frameworks, can meet most of the needs of small and medium-sized cloud computing demanders.
Therefore, power aggregation is a common characteristic of most computing service platforms.
2) However, the potential of competing computing service platforms lies not only in the scale of GPU resource aggregation itself but also in whether they can be implemented and applied. Heurist's differentiation lies in its focus on decentralized inference reasoning, fine-tuning, and other application scenarios, including AI Agents, AI NFT generation, AI conversations, and AI search, which are easier to implement.
In other words, what it aims to do is more web3 Native, focusing more on the application scenario implementation service layer, rather than being locked into a grand decentralized computing service platform that competes with AWS.
3) Heurist chose the ZK Stack and the elastic chain mechanism of Serverless, fundamentally aiming to highlight the 'lightweight' characteristic.
Using the zkVM built on ZK Stack can process and verify transactions, while its Prover network can generate Proofs. The DAC data availability committee has the characteristics of high throughput and low on-chain storage costs in the Validium model, etc. Moreover, the elastic scaling mechanism, i.e., Serverless architecture, can truly lower costs and leverage the 'lightweight' advantages that must be based on ZK technology.
How to understand this? The traditional server service model has fixed server hardware, maintenance, and other fixed costs. The elastic chain's main idea is a Scale-to-Zero dynamic load adjustment mechanism, where payment is only made when actual inference occurs, without reserving resources and reducing computational resources to zero when not in use.
This is a highly resource-dependent elastic technology; without the flexibility of ZK Proofs as a foundational element, it would be impossible to achieve. At the same time, the key is that this mechanism can further refine and compress costs, Pay as you go.
4) In addition to the deep bundling of the underlying ZK Stack technology framework, Heurist and zkSync have many special connections, such as receiving airdrop incentives from the zkSync Hackathon, marking a beneficial exploration of zk Stack services aimed at the AI field. In terms of the zkSync ecosystem alone, it will have the same ecological position height and a series of subsequent growth incentive support as well-known projects like @grvt_io and @sophon.
Recently, zkSync's ecological support for $ZK incentives of 300 million over 9 months is booming, which is a real benefit. Heurist also launched an NFT minting event with OKX Wallet, rewarding 100,000 ZK tokens to the first 1,000 participants. Such events may go unnoticed at ordinary times, but will gain significant weight under the overall context of zkSync's generous airdrop.
That's it.
Overall, the AI+DePIN track has led everyone from ordinary retail investors to VCs to be drawn into the bullish expectations of the main upward wave, resulting in a brief stagnation and adjustment later affected by the market.
Such projects, which are more web3 Native and more integrated with web3 technology service architecture, can even be deeply bound with ecological growth, shedding the illusory and flashy visions for a more pure and pragmatic approach.
