Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )_
Author | Azuma ( @azuma_eth )_
Early this morning Beijing time, a16z Crypto partner Jason Rosenthal announced the 21 projects selected for the a16zCrypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) autumn program.
According to a16z Crypto's official description, the projects selected for this accelerator program come from 11 different countries, including Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Japan, Poland, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States (including Puerto Rico). The project categories cover various aspects of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including AI, DeFi, infrastructure, as well as more consumer-oriented applications such as photo sharing and map drawing.
Over the next 8 weeks, this batch of projects will receive guidance from top investors and founders within the CSX accelerator, and take this opportunity to establish connections with a16z's extensive ecosystem. Below is a brief introduction to the 21 projects in this batch (sorted alphabetically by project name).
Anera Labs
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/intheanera
Focus: DeFi
CSX's one-liner: Building a unified liquidity infrastructure across the chain.
Funding status: No
Banyan
Project or founder's social media: To be determined
Focus: AI
CSX's one-liner: Using artificial intelligence to bridge communication gaps in work and improve operational efficiency for enterprises.
Funding status: No
Blocksense
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/blocksense_
Focus: Oracle
CSX's one-liner: Making it possible to create oracles that can utilize internet data and CPU/GPU computing.
Funding status: Yes
Blocksense announced today that it has completed a $4 million seed round of financing, led by Permutation, with participation from a16z's Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), Scott Moore, Public Works, Tykhe Block Ventures, Selini Capital, and MH Ventures.
Blocksense is a ZK Rollup-based oracle solution that reduces high costs through tightly packed data blocks, introduces a transparent fee model, and provides fully decentralized, permissionless data feeds, aiming to fundamentally change the oracle network. Anyone can become a data provider on the network by staking BlockSense tokens, and nodes will automatically perform all reporting tasks by obtaining the appropriate oracle scripts and broadcasting their results to the BlockSense network.
Cork Protocol
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/Corkprotocol
Focus: DeFi
CSX's one-liner: A risk pricing protocol aimed at accelerating the development of on-chain credit.
Funding status: Yes
Cork Protocol announced today the completion of a seed round of financing, with investors including Orange DAO, Founderheads, IDEO CoLab Ventures, Outliers Fund, Unbounded Capital, Steakhouse Financial, and over 20 angel investors. The investment amount was not disclosed. Cork aims to expand and accelerate the development of on-chain credit by helping market participants price and hedge risks.
DOT
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/dotdotfan
Focus: Gaming
CSX's one-liner: Transforming user-created pixel art into on-chain game components.
Funding status: No
Fermah
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/fermah_xyz
Focus: ZK infrastructure
CSX's one-liner: Building a universal zero-knowledge proof generation layer.
Funding status: No
Future Primitive
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/futureprimitive
Focus: Consumer applications
CSX's one-liner: An internet social platform based on photos.
Funding status: No
Kuzco
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/kuzco_xyz
Focus: AI
CSX's one-liner: LLM reasoning market.
Funding status: Yes
Kuzco's official website has not disclosed funding information, but Frictionless Capital has mentioned investing in Kuzco when announcing a new fund. According to the VC's official website and related social media information, it can be verified that the Kuzco they invested in is the same project selected for CSX this time.
According to publicly available information, Kuzco is a distributed GPU cluster built on the Solana blockchain, aiming to promote efficient and economical reasoning for large language models (LLM) such as Llama3, Mistral, and Phi3.
MeshMap
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/meshmapxyz
Focus: Consumer applications
CSX's one-liner: Building a 3D world map and AR content network.
Funding status: No
Opacity Labs
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/OpacityNetwork
Focus: Privacy
CSX's one-liner: Using zkTLS to achieve privacy verification of Web2 data.
Funding status: No
Combining historical developments, Opacity Labs has been integrated into EigenLayer, becoming one of the mainnet AVS services, allowing users to generate proofs of their data on existing Web2 platforms, thereby advancing the realization of user data sovereignty.
OpenGradient
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/OpenGradient
Focus: AI
CSX's one-liner: Building a blockchain that brings computing power onto the chain.
Funding status: No
According to OpenGradient's website, the project's self-positioning is as a "native intelligent network supporting sovereign AI."
PIN AI
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/PINAI_IO
Focus: AI
CSX's one-liner: Building a personal AI open platform (data + proxy).
Funding status: Yes
PIN AI completed a $10 million seed round of financing today, led by a16z Crypto. PIN AI is an AI infrastructure company that is developing the world's first open-source personal intelligent network (PIN), aiming to transform smartphones into privacy-focused personal AI assistants, allowing users to fully control and own their personal AI.
Pod Network
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/poddotnetwork
Focus: Layer1
CSX's one-liner: A new L1 primitive, without blocks, without leader nodes, and broadens the concept of transaction total ordering.
Funding status: No
Sekai
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/joinsekai
Focus: Content, IP
CSX's one-liner: Making it easier to create, share, and monetize interactive stories.
Funding status: No
After a simple trial, Sekai seems to be like a picture version of Story (there is also cooperation between the two), allowing multiple users to collaborate in creating a graphic and textual story.
Skyfire
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/trySkyfire
Focus: AI
CSX's one-liner: An open payment protocol that allows AI agents to pay any fees.
Funding status: Yes
In August of this year, Skyfire, founded by former Ripple executives, announced the completion of an $8.5 million seed round of financing, aiming to provide encrypted payment solutions for AI agents. Investors in this round of financing include Circle, the issuer of USDC, Ripple, Gemini, as well as Tim Draper's venture capital firm, a well-known billionaire and Bitcoin advocate in Silicon Valley.
Skyfire has developed an open-source payment system that allows autonomous AI agents to conduct various transactions on the internet, including purchasing data storage, creative assets, airline tickets, and daily necessities. Its payment network operates on the USDC stablecoin and is currently deployed on the Polygon network, with plans to expand to other blockchains in the future.
Suave
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/suave_money_
Focus: DeFi
CSX's one-liner: Allowing DApps to accept any tokens from any wallet on any blockchain.
Funding status: No
t1 protocol
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/t1protocol
Focus: Ethereum scaling
CSX's one-liner: Real-time proof generation to ensure Ethereum's state uniformity.
Funding status: Yes
Ethereum scaling solution t1 protocol announced today the completion of a $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing, with participation from a16z Crypto Startup School (CSX), Espresso, Frax, CowSwap, ETHGlobal, ENSO, INJECTIVE, as well as angel investors such as Guy Wuollet, AliYahya, and Eric Chen. It is reported that the t1 protocol aims to provide a scaling solution for Ethereum, supporting real-time proof generation to ensure Ethereum's state uniformity.
TACEO
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/TACEO_IO
Focus: ZK infrastructure
CSX's one-liner: Providing MPC encrypted computation for Web3.
Funding status: No
Previously, TACEO was selected as one of the first 17 winning projects in the Worldcoin community grant program. Earlier, Nil Foundation collaborated with TACEO to use ZK technology to verify machine learning (ML) models on the Ethereum mainnet, enabling machine learning to operate in smart contracts without the need for third-party trust.
Term Labs
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/term_labs
Focus: DeFi
CSX's one-liner: A DeFi lending platform that matches borrowers and lenders with fixed rates.
Funding status: Yes
In February 2023, Term Labs announced the completion of a $2.5 million new round of financing, led by Electric Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, MEXC Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and others. The new funds will be used to build fixed-rate DeFi products.
In May 2024, Term Labs, under the protocol name Term Finance, announced the completion of a $5.5 million strategic round of financing, led by Electric Capital, with participation from Arete Capital, Delta Blockchain Fund, Inception Capital, Blizzard Fund, Maelstrom, and others. The new funds will be used to develop the protocol and accelerate Term's roadmap, simplifying lending through features such as looping, passive lending, automation, and real-time alerts.
vlayer labs
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/vlayer_xyz
Focus: ZK infrastructure
CSX's one-liner: Untrusted verifiable data infrastructure supported by zero-knowledge proofs.
Funding status: No
zkSpin
Project or founder's social media: https://x.com/zkspin
Focus: Gaming chain
CSX's one-liner: Building a highly parallel blockchain to run demanding DApps on-chain.
Funding status: No
According to core contributor justinzhang.eth, zkSpin will mainly focus on high-performance gaming scenarios. zkSpin allows each application session to have its own temporary zkRollup. This zkRollup can be run on the player's own device, achieving optimal performance without consuming any gas fees during the game, as it does not occupy any public block space and is equally secure under zk proof.
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