Compiled by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
On March 31, 2025, a16z crypto announced the launch of its fourth crypto startup accelerator (CSX 04) this week in San Francisco and revealed 9 selected projects.
Here are brief introductions to the 9 CSX 04 selected projects:
1、Ambient
Ambient is an SVM-compatible Proof of Work L1 that provides ultra-large-scale verification inference on 600B+ parameter models and their fine-tuning.
Ambient's hyper-optimized Proof of Logic (PoL) consensus processes LLM operations 100 times faster than traditional systems. Ambient breaks free from model market paralysis, concentrating miners, users, and agents on an evolving LLM giant. Ambient's miners are not just validators but participants. Ambient features anti-censorship and privacy protection, no rate limits and no bans, won't be silently downgraded or coerced, won't compete as a platform agent with your business, and won't treat every query as an ideological touchstone. As a complete fork of Solana, Ambient replaces PoS with PoW while still running at Solana's full speed, offering the Solana development and economic convenience you expect, enhanced by state-of-the-art on-chain accessible foundational models and other new features.
2、Cambrian
Cambrian is an AI infrastructure protocol that transforms on-chain and off-chain data into quickly accessible financial intelligence. Cambrian's functionality is supported by a decentralized validator network that indexes blockchain data while rapidly extracting off-chain data. In an era of unprecedented agent growth, Cambrian is blazing a revolutionary path to better serve human and agent needs. Cambrian's focus is first on data breadth and access speed, then on enhancing verifiability, new data types, and enhanced sovereignty.
Inco is a modular confidential computing Layer 1 blockchain and universal confidential layer for Ethereum and other networks, utilizing a combination of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), Zero-Knowledge (ZK), Multi-Party Computation (MPC), and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to achieve composable and operable confidential states. We enhance existing blockchain capabilities, enabling the writing of private smart contracts and computation on encrypted data without decryption.
This innovation unlocks broad use cases with confidential components, such as card games, DID, private voting, dark pools, paving the way for a new era of possibilities.
4、KYD Labs
KYD Labs is a live event ticketing platform that is "transforming the American music industry during a period when traditional ticketing giants are clearly unsatisfied. Currently serving over 500,000 fans, KYD Labs helps music venues like LPR convert advertising spend into efficient ticket sales. This integration can provide venues and artists with up to 10 times return on ticket, merchandise, and music advertising spend".
Building next-generation AI agents through gamification and blockchain technology, enabling multiple agents to interact, learn, and evolve in complex environments. Implementing game rules between multi-agents to achieve autonomous play and emergent behavior. Enabling AI agents to conduct autonomous economic activities in decentralized environments.
6、Mahojin
Mahojin is a Web3-based AI image blending layer. Users can instantly generate professional-quality images by blending on any third-party application. Mahojin aims to create a "GitHub" for AI model creators and dataset developers, with a platform that enables intellectual property tracking and pays royalties to original contributors of models and datasets.
7、ORO
A decentralized intelligence platform unlocking private data for cutting-edge AI.
8、Toji
Building an on-chain popularity market for videos.
9、ZAR
Building a decentralized cash-to-stablecoin platform for emerging markets. ZAR can help find nearby merchants, safely and conveniently exchange cash for digital currency, serving as a bridge between cash economy and Web3, accelerating stablecoin adoption.
According to official information from a16z crypto, CSX aims to help early-stage startups leverage blockchain technology to accelerate development and product-market fit, providing startups with the expertise, guidance, and support needed to build ambitious products across various industries.
In the next two months, founders of CSX 04 selected project companies will receive first-hand guidance and support from a16z crypto's investment and operations team. a16z will also invest at least $500,000 in each selected company.
