With strategic investment from Yzi Labs, how is Aspecta utilizing AI to build on-chain credentials?

Author: Alex Liu, Foresight News

On the evening of July 10, Yzi Labs announced a strategic investment in Aspecta. This article aims to briefly interpret Aspecta – which seeks to build on-chain standards and trust mechanisms for "illiquid assets" in traditional capital markets, including the project's design logic, product system, application progress, and industry potential.

Team Background

In terms of team background, Aspecta did not start from scratch. The project was incubated in 2022 at Yale University's Tsai CITY (Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale), and the core team members come from top universities and research institutions, including Yale, Tsinghua, Berkeley, and McGill, with multiple patents and research achievements in AI and graph learning. The co-founding team includes former Tinder Chief Scientist Steve Liu (Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering) serving as Chief Scientist, Jack He as Co-Founder, and the team also brings together several senior engineers and growth leaders such as Jane Yang.

Jack He from Lianchuang spoke at TreeHacks

Why does ### appear? What pain points does it solve?

In traditional markets, a large number of assets such as early-stage equity, locked tokens, private equity, and real-world assets (RWA) cannot be traded on public markets, lacking transparent pricing, which severely restricts liquidity and pricing efficiency. Aspecta proposes to give these "closed assets" a "life" on the blockchain, not only enabling pricing but also providing trading capabilities, thereby reducing information asymmetry and enhancing asset utilization.

When analyzing this logic, one might imagine: a project locks a portion of its tokens in round A, and after the expiration, it does not dare to exit immediately due to a lack of market liquidity and pricing mechanisms. Aspecta, through a standardized "packaging + reputation mechanism," allows these assets to be priced, traded, and tracked—unlocking new value for them.

Two core products: BuildKey and Aspecta ID

The design context of Aspecta is clear, with the core divided into two mutually supportive paths:

BuildKey: Asset Standardization and Lifecycle Pricing

BuildKey presents non-liquid assets in the form of tradable ERC-20 class certificates. For example, pre-TGE equity, lock-up period tokens, private placement rights, etc., can all be issued and traded on-chain through BuildKey. This mechanism supports various pricing methods such as AMM, order books, and auctions, and allows assets to switch between different lifecycle stages, such as "on-chain relay" between venture capital and public trading markets.

It is worth noting that since its launch, BuildKey has supported over 25 digital assets for pricing, completing more than 50 million transactions, which has once proved a strong demand for closed capital in on-chain liquidity mechanisms. It is not just simple token minting, but a system of "lifecycle asset variants": users can freely enter and exit at multiple stages such as TGE, lock-up, and secondary markets, resulting in more continuity in asset pricing.

Aspecta ID: AI-driven Trusted Identity Protocol

If BuildKey is an asset certificate tool, Aspecta ID is a trust mechanism that grants endorsement to the issuer. It integrates data such as GitHub commits, on-chain behavior, and project contributions, using AI algorithms to create credit profiles for developers, projects, and even asset issuers, and issues credit scores.

This mechanism eliminates the "trust vacuum" in asset packaging. During the early stages of a project or when it is in a closed phase, the trust output of Aspecta ID can reduce the concerns of investors and traders. Currently, over 54,000 GitHub developers have completed verification, and the system is transitioning from a trust protocol to a community governance level.

Product linkage: How to form a closed loop?

In the architecture of Aspecta, BuildKey and Aspecta ID do not exist in isolation, but rather complement each other and are interconnected throughout, creating a complete closed-loop ecosystem from asset generation to trust establishment and transaction circulation. For example, when a developer submits code on GitHub and associates it with a project, their technical contributions and on-chain activities are recognized, evaluated, and form a reputation profile by the Aspecta ID system. Based on this identity verification mechanism, the project has clear trust support when subsequently issuing non-liquid assets such as pre-TGE equity. These assets are then tokenized on-chain through the BuildKey mechanism, publicly sold, and undergo initial price discovery, while also establishing transaction records.

As community participation deepens, the AMM, order book, and auction mechanisms supported by BuildKey gradually enhance the price transparency and trading depth of assets. Throughout this process, users flexibly decide whether to participate in subscriptions or withdraw investments based on the issuer's credit rating and market pricing, allowing assets to form a complete lifecycle trajectory, accumulating verifiable trading history and value feedback. This mechanism not only promotes price transparency for early-stage assets but also establishes a positive cycle between the trust mechanism and liquidity: on one hand, Aspecta ID provides underlying credit anchoring for assets; on the other hand, on-chain transaction data continuously feeds back into the trust evaluation system, making subsequent asset issuance more efficient and credible.

Community, Users, and Ecosystem

By mid-2025, Aspecta has attracted over 650,000 users to participate in the platform, including more than 54,000 developers verified through GitHub, who play a vital role in ecosystem building, further enhancing the practicality and appeal of the identity system. At the same time, BuildKey has supported the on-chain issuance and trading of over 25 types of non-liquid assets, demonstrating the mechanism's broad adaptability to the market. The active participation of the community has also accelerated the implementation of mechanisms such as multi-chain compatibility, hybrid AMM, and order book models, with the overall ecosystem expanding towards a more open and flexible direction.

From a practical perspective, Aspecta is building a triangular structure of "AI + assets + community," attempting to create a complete closed-loop process from identity recognition, asset packaging to on-chain governance and incentives, initially forming an infrastructure-level network effect.

Conclusion

Aspecta is attempting to bridge the gap between traditional capital and Web3 with its own methodology of "trustworthy identity + lifecycle asset packaging + on-chain liquidity mechanism." From GitHub submissions to token certificates, from closed issuance to secondary market trading, its product system is continuously and coherently upgraded. Although still in its early stages, the over $50 million BuildKey trading volume and a user base of over 650,000 provide a solid foundation.