0. A Formative Year
It’s been a year since we closed a well-funded round led by Sequoia China and dao5. We have seen growth of HyperOracle as we evolve our protocol and laid a solid foundation moving forward. In preparation for 2024, let’s walk through what we have accomplished so far:
1. First Debut at ETHDenver
As a Web3 native project, our team is spread across the world. This past February was our first time meeting one another in person at ETHDenver. We had met many new frens, partners, and early supporters, who had probably seen the first public demo there.
We will be at ETHDenver 2024. Meanwhile, zkOracle has become even more powerful - not only richer data sources and arbitrary compute, but also AI! Stay tuned regarding our activities and a bigger presence this spring.
2. Product Launches
Our mission has always been to decentralize and secure dApps. Through zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, we remove unnecessary trust assumptions from traditional oracle solution and transform oracle into a faster, safer, and wholesome oracle.
But isn’t ZK hard? It doesn’t have to be with our zkGraph. zkGraph is a custom piece of code for builders to define their desired oracle operations, such as historical onchain data access or complex compute or trustless automation, in AssemblyScript. Instead of spending months mastering a DSL (domain specific language) and ZK circuit writing, builders can free up their time and dedicate all their energies to shipping visions to products.
For swift user onboarding, we have developed a Web IDE (integrated development environment) as well as scaffolds. Take a look at what you can build today here and here. The best place to get started is diving into the developer documentation.
AI caught eyeballs when ChatGPT experienced a meteoric rise. We believe AI can power blockchain to do things more efficiently and crypto economic incentives can make opensource AI a reality and sustainable. Earlier in the year, we invented opML (optimistic machine learning), a cheaper and practical approach to bring AI onchain. HyperOracle granted smart contracts power to process AI inference on all blockchains. For example, we had successfully put Stable Diffusion and LLaMA 2 onchain. Try it yourself at ai.hyperoracle.io! Currently we are adding features to support real-world applications and look forward to working with AI companies and communities to include various models.
3. Grants & Partners
The support and validation we’ve received from grants and collaborators have helped us shape our offering. Our first ever grant is awarded by the Ethereum Foundation KZG Grant Round. We demonstrated implementation prowess in Halo2, which is the base proving system behind zkOracle.
zkOracle changes how we view and apply transparency, verifiability, and trust. Specifically, we have designed a liquidation keeper for Compound. To preserve decentralization, DeFi protocols advocate for the community to run the liquidation process. Any one can use our Compound keeper to determine liquidation status of a user address based on onchain history and initiate an onchain transaction through zkAutomation as part of the liquidation operation. This entire process is done trustlessly and permissionlessly.
In addition to Ethereum, we have extended zkOracle to the wider EVM community, starting with Polygon CDK. As Polygon’s Sandeep puts it, "By integrating HyperOracle’s cutting-edge zkOracle with Polygon CDK, HyperOracle empowers developers to build applications we have not seen before in web3. [We’re all] excited to see how the Polygon developer community will leverage these new superpowers.”
This strategic collaboration is multifold. As a core contributor of Polygon CDK, like Celestia and OKX, HyperOracle is co-developing a new zkWASM based proving backend. A Type-1 zkWASM will be enhanced with Plonky and expected to drive its efficiency to new heights.
Obviously, the list is non-exhaustive. We only name a few and we hope to feature our progress and partners in greater depth in the future. If your project is interested in trustless oracle, automation, and heavy compute, such as AI generated content, agents/bots, or sophisticated DeFi strategies, let’s take zkOracle to your ecosystem!
4. Ecosystem and Developers
HyperOracle’s ecosystem is getting stronger and more active by day. We are committed to supporting explorers and builders who are passionate about decentralization, anti-censorship, and trust minimization. Recently, we have participated in Story Protocol’s Alpha Hackathon and took home second place with a zkKYC project that enables IP management without borders.
While we were content with how quickly we could deploy a zkGraph and showcase zkOracle’s strengths, the success of our ecosystem project trumped. The winning team, 7007 Studio, has adopted both ERC-7007, which we co-authored, and opML and prototyped a Gen-AI marketplace that assists artists in creating their own fine-tuned model and registering IP on Story Protocol automatically.
Building a project is never easy. We put together a structured program to guide builders to the right resources. Each applicant submits two zkGraph use cases; our team will help unblock any issue along the way with Discord assistance. Selected scholars will have the opportunity to meet our team and industry leaders IRL. Together, we will mature their ideas to sustainable projects. Application closes on January 19, 2024.
One common question we get is how can one contribute to HyperOracle’s budding ecosystem. You can partake in the scholar program or help scholars and ecosystem builders expedite their learning and onboarding process. Both ecosystem builders and scholar program applicants rely heavily on existing tutorials and developer documentation. We encourage the community to create tutorials and materials that will better the overall experience according to what you went through in your personal journey.
For a diverse, vibrant ecosystem, we need zkGraph use cases in DeFi, social, NFT, gaming, DAO - in all areas. You can write an article or tweet and suggest your idea(s). Someone may bring that to life! If you’re hands-on, visit HyperOracle’s repo: write a zkGraph, add a data source, or break the system a.k.a find bugs :) Being an active member on Discord or X and tell others about HyperOracle is equally meaningful to building a robust community 👯👯👯👯
5. Public Contributions: Open Standards and Researches
We think a lot about optimizing oracle and general blockchain as much as solving hard problems from first principles. Besides core protocol development, we have made contributions that have garnered official acknowledgement, popularity, and further discussions: Ethereum (ERC-6150, ERC-7007), Celestia, and Uniswap. It’s a fun way to engage with different ecosystems and learn. At the end of day, we are working towards similar goals.
Since April 2023, we have initiated and been advocating for the World Supercomputer public good initiative. The world computer concept is not new. A collective of permissionless, open-source projects came together with a new open architecture in mind, offering access to internet-scale computational power and storage capacity for all.
From the beginning, this public good set its mission to deliver decentralized Artificial Intelligence (dAI), the unstoppable internet brain, to every individual - before the AI trend picked up over the summer. For community engagement, we have organized meetups and technical events in Montenegro and Singapore sharing the latest innovation surrounding decentralized AI. Join the discussion.
To address the most dire needs our users face, we DYOR constantly. We have shared our thoughts extensively across a range of topics:
You can count on us to produce quality thought pieces and initiatives🫱🏻🫲🏻
6. Growing Team
Our team is growing! New hire to be announced in the new year ;)
Come work with us.
Thank you for being with us as we grow. We have a full line-up of announcements coming 🚀 Sit tight. It’ll be quite a ride.🌈
Happy New Year!- HyperOracle Team
About HyperOracle
HyperOracle is a programmable zkOracle protocol that powers smart contracts with arbitrary compute and richer data sources. HyperOracle offers full security and decentralization for trustless automation and onchain AI/ML so builders can easily create next-gen dApps.