ZK proving must move beyond GPUs as AI tightens compute supply, Cysic CEO says

ZK proving has begun competing with trillion-dollar AI data centers for the same GPUs, raising proof costs even as Cysic reports a 9% performance gain from improving hardware use. Summary Cysic says inefficient GPU use, rather than inadequate raw computing power, now drives proving costs. ZK workloads compete with AI for Nvidia GPUs despite relying on different mathematical operations. Real-time Ethereum proving and ZK-rollups could face higher costs before consumer applications do. Cysic expects the squeeze to speed up adoption of FPGAs, ZK-specific ASICs and open prover markets. Cysic founder and CEO Leo Fan told crypto.news that GPU use has become a binding constraint for zero-knowledge proving because proof systems now compete with heavily funded AI data centers for the same silicon. “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 centre budgets for the same silicon. That’s why the hardware layer had to be opened up rather than left to a handful of proprietary provers.” The pressure does not come from a lack of computing capacity alone, according to Fan. He said th...