What Was Cysic's Original Goal?

Leo Fan says the original goal of Cysic was to design specialized chips for zero-knowledge proof generation. As the work moved along, GPUs and even FPGAs proved good enough to carry out the current proofs the team had in mind. Cysic does not need a chip of its own.

A custom chip would mean spending several million dollars on a tape-out, then improving the efficiency of Cysic's own chip. Leo Fan says the team can rely on off-the-shelf hardware instead. He is the founder and CEO of Cysic, and the company began as a plan to build that specialized silicon for proof generation.

The hardware plan now uses GPUs and FPGAs already for sale. Cysic still aims at zero-knowledge proof generation, but the path runs through parts the team can buy rather than a multi-million-dollar tape-out.