Interpretation of Gensyn in one article: Three financings have won more than 50 million US dollars, and a16z leads the investment in the blockchain AI computing protocol

By Nancy, PANews

With the trend of ChatGPT sweeping, the AI track has become a hot track, and various related projects have shown a blowout development and are favored by capital. Recently, UK-based blockchain AI computing protocol Gensyn announced the completion of a $43 million Series A financing led by a16z. Other investors include CoinFund, Canonical Crypto, Protocol Labs, Eden Block, and many angels in the field of artificial intelligence and encryption Investors.

Why did Gensyn obtain huge financing in the fiercely competitive AI track? How did this blockchain start-up, which was established more than two years ago, democratize computing, and has it become an important infrastructure component for Web3 applications?

The founder is also a member of the startup incubator, and the three rounds of financing have received a total of more than 50 million US dollars

Gensyn was founded in 2020 by computer science and machine learning research veterans Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve. Among them, Harry Grieve, who studied at Brown University and the University of Aberdeen, is a data scientist and entrepreneur who led a start-up company from seed round to B round and sold enterprise AI solutions to some of the world's largest financial institutions; Ben Fielding graduated from Northumbria University and served as the co-founder of the SaaS platform Fair Custodian and director of Research Analytics.

Ben Fielding (left) and Harry Grieve (right)

Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve are both members of the LD14 cohort of the entrepreneurial incubator Entrepreneur First. The two met from March 2020 to September 2020, and then they hit it off and decided to form a team to start a business.

In January 2021, Gensyn received US$1.1 million in Pre-Seed round financing from 4 investors, 7percent Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Counterview Capital and Id4 Ventures. Subsequently, in March 2022, Gensyn received a $6.5 million seed round of financing led by Eden Block with 11 PTTs. 11 investors including Galaxy Digital, Maven 11, Coinfund, Jsquare, Hypersphere, and Zee Prime participated in the investment. In the latest round of financing, Gensyn completed a $43 million Series A financing, but did not disclose the specific valuation, and this round of financing will be used to accelerate the launch of the protocol, expand the workforce, and recruit machine learning engineers.

"Recent advances in artificial intelligence have been incredible and have the power to save the world. But building AI systems requires deploying ever greater computing power to train and reason about the largest and most powerful models available today. This means that large tech Companies have an edge over startups in the race to extract value from AI, thanks to their privileged access to computing power and the economies of scale of large data centers. To compete on a level playing field, startups need Affordable large-scale computing power. Blockchain as a new type of computer is unique in that developers can write code and make strong promises about how the code will behave in the future. Block The blockchain, a permissionless component, can create a market for buyers and sellers of computing power (or any other type of digital resource, such as data or algorithms), without intermediaries on a global scale.” a16z explained why he invested in Gensyn in a post when explained.

To date, Gensyn has raised more than $50 million in three rounds of funding.

The ultimate goal is to democratize AI, and the testnet is expected to be launched this year

Gensyn is a decentralized deep learning computing protocol designed to be the base layer for machine learning computing, similar to Ethereum's smart contract execution.

As a blockchain-based AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) computing power market protocol, Gensyn can connect developers (anyone who can train machine learning models) and solvers (Solver, anyone who wants to use their own machines to train machine learning models) people) to connect. Increase the available computing power for machine learning by 10-100 times by leveraging the long tail of machine learning-capable computing devices that are idle around the world, such as small data centers, PC gaming PCs, M1 and M2 Macs, and even smartphones.

In fact, AGI is widely regarded as the holy grail of artificial intelligence, but researchers often need to rely on the massive calculations that are critical to using artificial intelligence for everything from self-driving cars to computer-generated imagery. Yes, but they often struggle to acquire sufficient computer power to do so. As mentioned above by a16z, the monopoly situation of large technology companies makes the AGI industry face a high degree of centralization at this stage.

Gensyn is essentially a first-tier proof-of-stake blockchain based on the Substripe protocol, which can promote machine learning task allocation and rewards through smart contracts, so as to quickly realize the learning ability of AI models and reduce the price of deep learning training. As shown in the figure above, the hourly cost of Gensyn's machine learning training work is about $0.4, which is far lower than the required costs of AWS ($2) and GCP ($2.5).

The core challenge of Gensyn is to verify whether the computing tasks performed on the device have been performed correctly, and trigger payment through tokens. To this end, Gensyn primarily addresses the verification problem through three key concepts, namely probabilistic proof-of-learning (uses metadata from gradient-based optimization processes to build a certificate of work performed and replicates certain stages for fast verification) , graph-based pinpointing protocol (uses multi-grained, graph-based pinpointing protocol and cross-evaluator consistent execution to allow re-running of validation work and compares consistency, and is ultimately confirmed by the chain itself), Truebit-style incentive games (using staking and slashing to build an incentive game that ensures each financially rational participant acts honestly and performs its intended tasks).

Gensyn's system mainly consists of four main actors: submitters, solvers, verifiers, and whistleblowers. Among them, the submitter is the end user of the system, who provides the task to be calculated and pays for the completed work unit; the problem solver is the main work part of the system, performs model training and generates proofs for verification by the verifier; The deterministic training process is linked to a deterministic linear computation, replicating part of the solver's proof and comparing the distance to an expected threshold; the whistleblower is the system's last line of defense, essentially checking the work of the verifier and issuing challenges to claim the jackpot .

According to the official introduction, the development of the Gensyn protocol will be divided into three stages: test network, canary network and main network. Among them, the tokens used in the testnet will be non-permanent, and users of the testnet will become early adopters and core members of the community, and they will receive rewards on TGE (Token Generation Event). After the successful iteration of the testnet, the Gensyn protocol will be launched as a canary network parachain on the Kusama relay chain; the mainnet will be a hardened real-time protocol that any organization or individual can fully use, including the launch of the mainnet utility token. According to Harry Grieve, Gensyn plans to launch a testnet later this year.

It is worth mentioning that the Gensyn Foundation, as the interest representative of the protocol, has close ties with the early community, and the election will be governed in a decentralized manner, and decisions will be made based on on-chain proposals and referendums.

Overall, Gensyn's core goal is to democratize AI through decentralized initiatives and ensure that this huge potential productivity boost is available to any talented entrepreneur.