Introduction of Cysic Network

Jul 26, 2024

Cysic Network Overview

Cysic Network is a ZK-proof layer that hyperscales the ZK revolution. The main purpose of it is using Cysic’s leading CUDA and ASIC development, and the computing resources from the community, to expedite the ZK proof generation and settlement for all ZK projects. The speed and low cost of proof generation and the easiness of proof settlement are the main advantages of using the Cysic network. The users of Cysic Network are awarded Cysic tokens for their contributions.

Cysic Network uses a novel consensus mechanism, called Proof of Compute. It’s a combination of Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, which suits the settings of Cysic Network. Simply put, a computation puzzle is designed to select a committee responsible for proposing blocks for an epoch. The probability of proposing blocks for the epoch is proportional to the stake of the committee members.

In addition to the proving and settlement, Cysic Network empowers the community to adjust the computing power for multiple ZK projects dynamically. The reasons for the adjustment can be higher revenue, the boost of early ZK projects, and others. This adjustment is realized using a voting functionality on top of the chain. Users need to escrow their tokens to obtain the voting right, where the voting weight is proportional to the number of escrow tokens and escrow time.

The voting functionality allows Cysic Network to capture the value of the whole ZK ecosystem. The governance flow can be summarized in the figure below. For more information, check out our Litepaper and stay tuned for the more detailed Whitepaper.

As hinted above, there are two groups of users in Cysic Network, the ZK projects that provide the ZK tasks, and the provers/verifiers that provide the computing power for the ZK tasks. There are benefits for both groups for joining Cysic Network. For the ZK projects, the benefits are:

• Cheap: Cysic Network uses its close relationship with the miner community to provide the cheapest computing power in the space.
• Reliable: Multiple provers in different regions are selected for each proof task. This ensures that each proof task can be finished promptly.
• Performant: Being the leader in the ZK hardware acceleration space, Cysic provides the state-of-the-art CUDA implementation of various ZK-proof backends, including Halo2, Plonky2, Gnark, and RapidSnark.
• Flexible: Unlike the traditional AWS/SaaS fixed payment system, Cysic Network accepts flexible payment.

For the provers/verifiers with sufficient computing resources, joining Cysic Network comes with the following benefits:

• Committed: Based on the governance structure of Cysic Network, every user can adjust the computing power of Cysic Network to support different ZK projects.
• Profitable: Cysic Network ensures the prover/verifier machines plugged in have tasks to work on. The more tasks each user completes, the higher revenue the user gets. Currently, all machines in the Cysic network are fully occupied.

Development Timeline

We take a step-by-step strategy to develop the Cysic Network. The testnet of the Cysic Network consists of 3 phases. In each phase, we introduce the points incentive system to the. The incentive points are designed to reward contributors to the testnet, including:

• Verifiers
• Computing resource providers
• Active community members

The rewards of verifiers will be introduced in the first phase. Users who join as verifiers will receive rewards based on their verification contributions only, while computing resource providers are expected to receive rewards in the second phase. The POINTS obtained by participants will be converted into mainnet TOKENS via some ratios and other rewards.

The testnet of the Cysic Network consists of the following phases:

• Testnet Phase 1: We will launch Phase I at the end of July. The Phase I provides the basic functionalities of the network, including a Cosmos-based blockchain, a centralized scheduler to assign tasks, registration processes for projects, provers, and verifiers, a task tracking process for proving tasks, a dashboard, a Cysic blockchain explorer, incentive points, and so on. Incentive points are designed to reward contributors to the Cysic testnet network, including verifiers, computation resource providers, and active community members, where the points will be converted into mainnet tokens via some ratios. During Phase I, users who join as verifiers will receive rewards automatically based solely on their verification contributions. The inherent consensus mechanism of Cosmos CDK is used to propose blocks and reach consensus. We will invite community members to join our Testnet Phase I as verifiers to help settle the proofs. Several trusted parties chosen by Cysic will run the validators.
• Testnet Phase 2: This is our second testnet, which is scheduled to be live in early September 2024. The main feature added to this testnet is the Proof-of-Compute mechanism. Introducing the new consensus mechanism boosts the security and decentralization of the Cysic Network. In this network, we will invite community members with heavy computing resources to join as provers and validators.
• Testnet Phase 3: This is the last testnet before the mainnet, scheduled to be live in late November 2024. Compared with the prior network, the main added features are the task assignment process, the permissionless way to join the network and the voting functionality. In prior testnet, the proving tasks are assigned by a centralized scheduler. However, in the last testnet, provers and verifiers compute a verifiable random function to determine if they are eligible for a specific task, where the probability is based on the credit system. In addition to that, provers and verifiers do not need permission to join the network, and some necessary defending strategies are needed. Lastly, the voting functionality is implemented to let the community govern the Cysic Network.

If everything works out fine in the last testnet, we aim to bring the mainnet of the Cysic network live in early 2025, with rough structure as the following figure:

The Architecture of Cysic Network

The Testnet Phase 1

The first major release of Cysic Network is the Testnet Phase I. As described in the timeline part, it’s a permissioned network for testing the proof generation tasks and other core functionality, including projects/provers/verifiers registration, deployment, proving, verifying, networking, consensus, and other things.

The Testnet Phase I offers the following, as illustrated in the figure:

• Deploy arbitrary ZK projects.
• Allow verifiers on the whitelist to join the network.
• Run proving and verification process for tasks.
• Track task status.
• Store proofs in the DA layer.
• Incentive Points.

About Cysic

Cysic is an industry-leading ZK hardware acceleration project, dedicated to designing advanced ASIC chips to help reduce ZK proving generation time and become the first ZK Prover Network. It is a real-time ZK proof generation and verification layer, that aims to provide ZK proofs in the fastest, cheapest, simplest, and most decentralized way.

Cysic Provides ZK-CaaS (ZK Compute-as-a-Service) based on advanced self-developed ASIC chips and can undertake computing power requirements for all ZK computing scenarios including ZK Rollup, ZKML, ZK Bridge, etc. Based on chip computing power + community GPU computing power, it integrates many verification nodes in the community. Finally, it builds the Cysic Network to provide a credible integrated computing power + verification network for the entire industry.

For more information, welcome to join Cysic Community!

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