Financing 18 million | Cysic Research Report and Interactive Tutorial
Cysic's technological innovations can significantly enhance the performance and security of blockchain systems in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi), privacy protection, and data validation.Author: Small Person @MetaHunter168
Cysic is a startup focused on hardware acceleration for zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), dedicated to enhancing the computational efficiency of ZKP through application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), while reducing latency and energy consumption. Cysic's technological innovations can significantly improve the performance and security of blockchain systems, particularly in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi), privacy protection, and data validation.
Financing Situation
Cysic recently completed a $12 million pre-A round of financing, led by HashKey Capital and OKX Ventures; last February, it completed a $6 million seed round, led by Polychain Capital. The total financing amount is $18 million.
Project Background Investigation
1. Core Team Members
The project is entirely composed of individuals with Chinese backgrounds and is led by Chinese leaders overseas. According to Rootdata, there are two core founding members. Xiong Fan: Co-founder of Cysic, previously a cryptography researcher at Algorand. An Asian face, graduated from Sichuan University and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University. Bowen Huang: A Yale University graduate, chip designer, and co-founder of Cysic. Also an Asian face. According to LinkedIn, the team consists of fewer than 50 members, and most of the visible member profiles show that they are predominantly of Asian descent.
2. Work Experience
Xiong Fan: Early internships at Yahoo, Bell Labs, IBM, etc. Full-time work mainly as a cryptography researcher at Algorand (public chain project) for 1 year and 3 months; then went to Rutgers University as an assistant professor for 1 year and 1 month; founded the Cysic blockchain project in August 2022. Bowen Huang: Worked at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for 6 years, then interned at Alibaba for 3 months, joined the Cysic team as a co-founder in 2022.
3. Project Registration Address
According to a whois query, the project website is registered in Arizona, USA; according to Crunchbase, the project entity is registered in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA.
4. Active Time Zone on Social Media
The official Twitter account is most active from 8 PM to 2 AM, which aligns with the US time zone.
5. Valuation Situation
Currently, news reports from various financing rounds have not disclosed the specific valuation of the project.
6. Token Economics
Cysic Network adopts a dual-token mechanism: $Token and $veToken. $Token is the native token of the network, used for paying transaction fees, block rewards, and staking rewards; $veToken is the governance token obtained by staking $Token, and users' voting rights are proportional to the amount and duration of staked $veToken. Provers and validators need to stake $Token to maintain the reliability of network services, and governance is achieved through $veToken, with voting rights proportional to the staking time and amount. Specific token distribution ratios are currently unavailable.
7. Are there clear incentives for early participants?
Yes, the Cysic project indeed has a token incentive plan for early users. The $Token will be used to incentivize provers, validators, and agents within the protocol, thereby establishing an effective governance and reward distribution mechanism.
Participation Opportunities
1. Secondary Opportunities
None at the moment. The project has not issued tokens and is not listed on trading platforms.
2. Level 1.5 Opportunities
Participate in the testnet.
Certainty
High Yield Potential: The official community clearly states that testnet participants have the opportunity to receive direct airdrops!
Low Barrier to Entry: Whether ordinary users or professional players, there are opportunities to participate. Validators only need a regular laptop, while provers need a GPU above 3070.
Multiple Benefits Opportunity: The official statement indicates that points earned from participating in the testnet can be exchanged for token rewards from Cysic's partners in the future. This means participants can receive both future airdrops from Cysic and distribution token rewards from Cysic's cooperative projects.
Testnet Participation Conditions
Obtain an incentive testnet whitelist.
How to Obtain a Whitelist?
Currently, there are three channels:
a. Participate in various activities held by the DC community.
b. Complete Galxe tasks.
c. Contribute to the official community to gain status.
Timeline
Testnet Phase 1: Cysic will launch the Incentive Devnet at the end of July.
Testnet Phase 2: This is Cysic's second testnet, planned to go live in early September 2024.
Testnet Phase 3: This is the last testnet before the mainnet, planned to go live in late November 2024.
Participation Data
The testnet has not yet started, and the community has just announced the first round of whitelist acquisition methods. Currently, the official DC community has about 108,000 members. Based on past experience, the active number of members in the DC community is generally 10%-20% of the total number, with an initial estimate of active members being 10,800-21,600.
Cake Size
Referring to the airdrop rules of similar projects, the estimated airdrop share for Cysic is 5%. The market value is estimated at 500 million to 1 billion, making the cake size around 25 million to 50 million.
Odds Size
Cost Estimate: Only considering the cost of a single number and ordinary validators. Ordinary validators can participate in verification using a laptop or mobile phone, and without considering the purchase of new equipment, the cost is almost negligible.
Whitelist Share Estimate: Recent community news clearly states that this round will temporarily issue 1,000 whitelist spots. Assuming each round of the testnet conducts five whitelist activities, the three rounds of the testnet are tentatively estimated to have 15,000 whitelist spots. Profit estimation: single number profit is approximately 1666U~3333U.
Risk Warning
The project has not yet disclosed its token economics, and the above profit and odds estimates are solely the author's subjective opinions and do not constitute any investment advice.
The team has an Asian background and is a project led by Chinese individuals. However, no negative records of the team have been collected so far.
Future KYC possibilities cannot be ruled out. Therefore, if using multiple accounts, one must consider this unknown risk.
The whitelist is mainly distributed through the DC community, which is quite subjective and may carry the risk of insider trading.
Execution Analysis
Currently, participating in the testnet requires obtaining whitelist qualification, and as mentioned earlier, there are three ways to obtain a whitelist.
1. Participate in various activities held by the DC community
Join the official DC community to participate in the latest community activities, complete the set task requirements, and obtain a whitelist.
For example, the latest activity is a content creation competition. It is recommended to collect publicly available project information and use AI to assist in completion; after publishing, be sure to record it in the cysorhub channel according to specific requirements. If you are not good at writing articles, that's okay; the official community will hold game activities and lottery events from time to time, which you can also participate in.
2. Complete Galxe Tasks
The final rules for obtaining a whitelist through Galxe tasks have not yet been determined. According to information revealed by the MOD in the Chinese community, it may be based on a lottery among participants or determined by ranking, but this is still uncertain. You can keep an eye on the latest community information.
3. Contribute to the official community to gain status
This is quite subjective and relies on your performance and emotional intelligence. You can be active in the official community and help newcomers.
Finally, here are the project-related links
Project official website: https://cysic.xyz/
Project Twitter: https://x.com/cysic_xyz
Project DC link: https://discord.gg/cysic
