ZK Hardware Acceleration: Can Cysic Become the Next Bitmain?

ZK technology has shown great potential in areas such as Ethereum scaling and trusted computing, but the current low efficiency of ZKP generation hinders its large-scale application. To address this issue, ZK hardware acceleration solutions have emerged, with Cysic being one of the leaders.

ZK Proof System Workflow

The core process of the ZK proof system includes:

1. Problem Setup: Define the content to be proven
2. Arithmetic and CSP: Transforming the content to be proven into a mathematical model
3. Choose a proof system ( such as Halo2, Plonk, etc. ) to generate ZKP programs.
4. The prover uses the ZKP program to generate proof, and the verifier performs the verification.

ZKP generation takes a long time but verification is quick. This asymmetry is beneficial for decentralized verification but also brings high costs.

Main Costs of ZKP Generation

The two most resource-intensive computing tasks in ZKP generation are MSM and NTT, accounting for 80-95% of the total time:

• MSM: Handling multi-scalar multiplication on elliptic curves
• NTT: Fast Fourier Transform over Finite Fields

MSM requires a large amount of memory and parallel computing resources, while NTT is limited by random memory access.

ZK Hardware Acceleration Solution

Currently, there are three main hardware acceleration solutions: GPU, FPGA, and ASIC.

• GPU: High popularity, easy to develop
• FPGA: Strong flexibility, high energy efficiency, but high development difficulty
• ASIC: highest performance, but long development cycle and high cost

Cysic's ZK Acceleration Layout

Cysic has laid out its strategy on multiple levels:

1. Cysic Network: ZK Mining Pool and SaaS Platform
   • Integrate self-owned and third-party computing power resources
   • Adopting the Proof of Compute consensus mechanism

2. GPU Acceleration:
   • Self-developed CUDA acceleration SDK
   • Gather a large amount of community GPU computing power resources

3. FPGA Solution:
   • Achieve the world's fastest MSM, NTT and other modules
   • SolarMSM and SolarNTT perform leadingly

4. ASIC Layout:
   • Launched two hardware products: ZK Air and ZK Pro
   • Build ZK-DePIN Network

With a multi-faceted layout, Cysic is expected to become a leader in the ZK hardware acceleration field, paving the way for the large-scale application of ZK technology.