Author | defioasis

Editor | Colin Wu

Well-known venture capital a16z recently announced that 21 cryptocurrency startups from all over the world have been selected for its Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) in the fall of 2024. This 8-week program aims to help these startups obtain top industry resources and support, including experience sharing from leading founders in the crypto industry, guidance from a16z's investment and operations teams, and extensive social network connections. The selected companies come from 11 different countries and cover all levels of the cryptocurrency technology stack, from DeFi, infrastructure to consumer applications. This article will take stock of the selected projects. It is worth noting that most of the projects are still in the early stages.

Anera Labs

Anera Labs is committed to building a unified on-chain liquidity infrastructure that provides instant liquidity for on-chain transactions through a permissionless decentralized market. Anera's system manages asynchronous time issues in the on-chain market through an underwriting mechanism, aiming to improve the efficiency and capital utilization of on-chain transactions.

Banyan

Banyan uses AI technology to focus on solving communication barriers at work and help companies improve collaboration efficiency. Its AI-driven platform helps teams improve work efficiency by eliminating blind spots and ambiguity in communication. Banyan can also bridge information across departments and teams to make daily operations of enterprises smoother.

Blocksense

Blocksense provides a framework for building oracles, which uses Internet data and CPU/GPU computing power to achieve more complex on-chain decisions. This oracle mechanism can improve the intelligence of DApps and provide smart contracts with a wider range of external data access.

Cork Protocol

Cork Protocol has developed a risk pricing protocol in the DeFi field, aiming to provide more accurate risk management solutions for the on-chain lending market. Its technology provides a more efficient matching tool for credit risk between borrowers and lenders through a real-time pricing mechanism, attempting to improve the problem of over- or underestimation of credit risk in the DeFi market, while also bringing more trust and liquidity to the decentralized credit ecosystem.

Dot

Dot is a platform that transforms user-created pixel art into on-chain game components, promoting the intersection of games and art. Users can create and sell pixel art through the Dot platform, and these works can not only become props in the game, but also be traded on the chain. Dot's vision is to give users true ownership in the game through blockchain, thereby changing the economy and creation methods in the game and creating a virtual ecosystem driven entirely by players and artists.

Fermah

Fermah focuses on developing a universal zero-knowledge proof generation layer to provide advanced privacy and security protection for blockchain users. Through zero-knowledge proof technology, users can complete complex on-chain operations without revealing any private information. Fermah's goal is to provide a highly scalable and efficient privacy protection mechanism for blockchain networks and enhance users' confidence in decentralized applications.

Future Primitive

Future Primitive is building a social platform based on photo sharing, aiming to connect global users in an innovative way. This platform not only provides users with a channel to share photos, but also allows users to establish social relationships with other users around the world. The future goal is to redefine social networks through photo sharing and provide users with a more private and interactive online photo community.

Kuzco

Kuzco is a marketplace focused on large language model (LLM) reasoning services, aiming to provide enterprises and developers with advanced AI reasoning capabilities. Through this marketplace, users can rent or purchase LLM reasoning services, saving time and cost in building and training AI models. Kuzco's platform is committed to simplifying the reasoning process of enterprises in AI application development, making the commercial application of AI more extensive and efficient.

MeshMap

MeshMap is building a global 3D map and AR content network, through which users can participate in the creation and sharing of augmented reality (AR) content. This project not only provides more accurate 3D visualization of map data, but also provides users with an interactive experience through AR technology. MeshMap's goal is to create a platform that seamlessly integrates virtual and real life.

Opacity Labs

Opacity Labs developed zkTLS technology, which focuses on providing privacy verification for data interactions between Web2 and Web3. With zkTLS technology, users can verify data without exposing private data, thereby ensuring the security and privacy of cross-platform data transmission. Opacity Labs' platform is particularly suitable for application scenarios that need to protect sensitive data, such as finance and identity authentication.

OpenGradient

OpenGradient is building a blockchain platform that aims to bring global computing resources onto the blockchain and support decentralized computing resource sharing. The platform hopes to break the existing computing bottleneck by seamlessly connecting computing resources to the blockchain, providing more efficient and lower-cost global computing power sharing to promote the realization of more complex blockchain applications, such as decentralized processing of AI and big data.

PIN AI

PIN AI is an open artificial intelligence platform that allows users to create personalized AI services through data and intelligent agents. This platform not only helps users develop personalized AI assistants, but also allows them to sell or share their AI models on the platform. PIN AI is committed to making AI more customizable so that ordinary users can easily use and develop AI applications.

Under

Pod is different from traditional blockchains. It eliminates the concept of blocks and adopts a leaderless design, allowing transactions to be performed in a looser order. This structure reduces the global ordering requirements for transactions, so transaction verification no longer needs to rely on a single leader node or block generation process. This flexibility allows the network to operate in a more efficient and scalable manner, especially for handling large numbers of low-latency transactions. At its core, Pod is a rethinking of the blockchain operating architecture, providing a novel way to achieve transaction confirmation and verification.

World

The Sekai platform allows creators to easily create, share, and monetize interactive narrative content. Its unique narrative toolset supports creators to publish interactive stories on-chain and earn revenue through user participation. Sekai is committed to changing the way traditional narrative content is published in a decentralized way, making it easier for global creators to connect with their audiences.

Skyfire

Skyfire is an open payment protocol that focuses on providing payment capabilities for decentralized AI agents. Its architecture supports AI agents to conduct transactions and payment operations autonomously, allowing AI to handle complex payment requests in different environments without human intervention. This design expands the application of AI in the fields of fintech and payment, and also provides new possibilities for the DeFi ecosystem. Skyfire ensures the security and reliability of payments by simplifying the payment process, and is suitable for smart contract execution and automated payment systems. The biggest highlight is that the payment function is fully embedded in the workflow of the AI ​​agent, enabling it to autonomously complete a series of financial operations in a decentralized environment, improving the intelligence and automation level of the decentralized payment system.

Suave

Suave enhances DeFi liquidity by providing a mechanism for DApps to accept any token from any wallet on any blockchain. Through the platform, DApps are able to operate across different blockchain networks, giving users greater flexibility and freedom of operation in a multi-chain environment.

t1

t1 provides a real-time proof generation technology to improve the operational efficiency of the Ethereum network. Through its unique proof generation mechanism, t1 is able to improve the reliability and security of the network and provide a more stable infrastructure for decentralized applications. The platform aims to achieve comprehensive optimization of Ethereum to help it meet future expansion challenges.

I am silent

TACEO provides multi-party computing (MPC) encryption technology, focusing on improving Web3 computing privacy. Its encryption computing technology allows multiple parties to collaborate on complex calculations without sharing data, ensuring the privacy and security of sensitive data during the calculation process.

Term Labs

Term Labs is a decentralized lending platform that focuses on matching borrowers with lenders through a fixed interest rate mechanism. The platform solves the volatility problem in the lending market by providing transparent and stable interest rates, providing a more stable funding liquidity solution for the decentralized financial market.

vlayer labs

Vlayer Labs is a decentralized data verification platform developed based on zero-knowledge proof technology. The platform is committed to building a trustless verifiable data infrastructure that allows complex calculations on chain data to be performed under the premise of privacy and security. Vlayer Labs' technical architecture provides developers with efficient and secure tools to verify data and ensure data integrity and privacy. Through Vlayer Labs' solutions, users can perform multi-party verification without exposing key data.

zkSpin

zkSpin is building a highly parallel blockchain platform designed specifically for DApps with high computational requirements. By leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology, zkSpin is able to improve the processing speed and efficiency of on-chain applications while ensuring privacy. zkSpin aims to solve the scalability problems in current blockchain technology, especially in supporting complex and computationally intensive applications, providing new solutions. zkSpin aims to support future decentralized big data and artificial intelligence applications.