OKX Ventures, the investment arm of the leading crypto exchange and Web3 technology company OKX, has announced its investment in Cysic. It is a zero-knowledge (ZK) hardware acceleration company. The investment of OKX Ventures in Cysic reflects their desire to accelerate the rate of generating ZK proofs. That means, it makes the process faster and also more cost-effective. It is also more user-friendly and virtually decentralized for all involved parties.
Great news! OKX Ventures is investing in Cysic to fuel the innovation of real-time ZKP technology. @cysic_xyz
— OKX Ventures (@OKX_Ventures) May 24, 2024
Cysic Pioneers Faster ZK Proofs with ASIC and GPU Engineering
Cysic, founded in August 2022, has made a name for itself in the rapidly expanding ZK hardware market. The company’s main aim is to achieve real-time ZK proof generation. Currently, a ZK proof generation process on CPU hardware is slow. This has been the main sticking point in the development of ZK techniques more widely.
As Cysic sees it, the answer to this problem lies in using their expertise in ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) design and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) engineering. Cysic offers enterprise-grade ZK compute-as-a-service to all sorts of ZK projects.
Cysic is committed to creating a real-time ZK proof generator with ASIC design. In a recent blog post from Cysic, suppliers said that the flexibility of their ASIC design based upon the zkVM improves products such as (real examples) ZK Air and ZK Pro.
OKX Ventures Investment Highlights Rising Importance of ZK Tech
ZK Air, which is roughly the size of a power bank or laptop charger can be connected to laptops, iPads or even smartphones even through a Type-C interface, accelerating ZK proof generation. ZK Pro, like traditional mining rigs, is specially designed to maximize the speed of generating ZK proofs. The proceeds from this funding round will be used to support Cysic’s global expansion strategy. This includes hiring new employees and ensuring their production facilities are up to scratch.
Besides supporting companies like Cysic, this investment by OKX Ventures also illustrates the rising importance of ZK technology in the blockchain and Web3 industries. Through this, they push the boundary of what can be done with blockchain technology OKX Ventures and Cysic’s partnership is expected to bring significant improvements to the ZK ecosystem, benefiting both the industry and its users.