Cysic CEO: ZK Proving Must Transition from GPUs Amid AI Demand

Demand for GPUs Increasingly Competes with AI

As the zero-knowledge (ZK) proving space rapidly evolves, the competition for GPU resources is intensifying, particularly due to the massive demand from AI technologies. Leo Fan, CEO of Cysic, recently highlighted these challenges, indicating that ZK proving costs are climbing as it now competes with trillion-dollar AI data centers.

Cost Pressures from Hardware Competition

According to Fan, the primary issue stems from inefficient usage of available GPU resources, rather than a fundamental lack of computing power. “AI models are converging. Compute isn’t. Everyone assumed proving costs would fall because chips get cheaper. Instead, we’re bidding against trillion-dollar data center budgets for the same silicon,” he said.

Fan explained that real-time Ethereum proving – and ZK-rollups more broadly – could see increasing costs as these workloads vie for the same resources as AI, which primarily utilizes Nvidia GPUs for matrix calculations. Despite the different mathematical operations that ZK proving and AI employ, they still share many of the same computing resources, putting a strain on availability.

Cysic’s Strategic Advancements

Cysic has reported a 9% performance improvement through more efficient use of existing hardware, thanks to their Venus proving engine. This engine works by optimizing the coordination between CPUs and GPUs, which helps to reduce proving times significantly without the need for new hardware investments. This was demonstrated by a notable enhancement over its previous version, ZisK.

While raw computation speed is improving, Fan cautioned that the architectural mismatch between zkVM software and the accelerators used could hinder effective proof generation. He advocated for a transition toward FPGAs and ZK-specific ASICs to alleviate some of these pressures by optimizing hardware specifically designed for ZK operations.

Future Implications for ZK Proving

Due to the increasing competition for GPUs, Cysic believes it is essential for ZK proving technologies to evolve. The need for specialized hardware solutions persists, as general-purpose GPUs may not adequately support the growing demand. Fan fears that unless these adaptations are made, proving costs could become a significant barrier to the adoption of ZK technology across various applications, especially in consumer-facing sectors such as payment systems and gaming.

Ultimately, if the current trajectory continues, more than 90% of ZK layer-2 networks may depend on an increasingly limited pool of prover services, which would stifle innovation and deployment in the field. To address this, Cysic is proposing the establishment of a global prover marketplace that would enhance collaboration and efficiency among different hardware types while mitigating risk and implementation errors.