What Is Cyber? The Social Data Layer for Crypto AI

Cyber is a Layer 2 blockchain ecosystem that unifies on-chain data with social context to power AI-driven crypto applications. Originally launched as CyberConnect in 2021, the project rebranded to emphasize its role as a foundational "social data layer" for Web3. It currently powers two major products: Surf, an AI research platform for crypto markets, and Link3, a verified identity and profile hub for Web3 organizations.

The project has quietly built serious infrastructure while others chased hype cycles. With over 580,000 followers on X and backing from investors like Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures, Cyber sits at the intersection of two dominant narratives: AI and decentralized identity.

What Problem Does Cyber Solve?

Traditional crypto applications treat on-chain data and social data as separate universes. Your wallet transactions exist in one silo. Your X posts, community interactions, and reputation exist in another. This fragmentation creates a problem for AI tools trying to make sense of crypto markets: they lack context.

Cyber bridges this gap by creating a composable data layer that enables developers to combine blockchain activity with social graphs. Instead of an AI only seeing that a wallet bought a token, it can also understand who the wallet belongs to, which communities they participate in, and their track record.

This structured data powers AI models that need to reason about crypto-specific scenarios. According to Cyber's team, their approach reduces hallucinations in AI agents by emphasizing verifiable, domain-specific data rather than general-purpose training.

How Does the Technical Architecture Work?

Cyber operates as a Layer 2 network, meaning it inherits security from Ethereum while offering higher throughput and lower costs. The infrastructure supports several core functions:

• Social Graph Protocol: Users own their connections and identities on-chain. Your profile travels across applications without rebuilding your network from scratch—similar to how email works across services, but with blockchain-verified authenticity.
• Data Unification: Combines on-chain signals (transaction histories, NFT ownership, token holdings) with off-chain social data (X posts, Discord activity, community reputation). This creates high-quality input for AI models.
• CYBER Token: The native asset for governance, staking, and network access, creating economic alignment between users, developers, and the protocol.

What Is Surf?

Surf is Cyber's AI-powered research platform, essentially a crypto-native analyst that processes market data, social sentiment, and on-chain activity through a chat interface.

Since launching in mid-2025, Surf has generated over 1 million research reports for more than 80,000 users. In December 2025, the project raised $15 million to scale operations and achieve enterprise-grade compliance, including SOC 2 certification.

What makes Surf different from general-purpose AI tools is its multi-agent architecture. Users can run complex queries like "compile all CZ tweets from 2025 mentioning a specific ticker" or "trace fund movements for prospecting research." Responses are pulled from verified sources, including Delphi, Messari, and Dune Analytics.

The latest version, Surf 1.5, shipped in January 2026 with 10% accuracy improvements and 50% faster response times. Mobile access and a Crypto Pulse feature for curated news notifications round out the update.

Cyber claims Surf outperforms state-of-the-art models on crypto benchmarks by up to 4x. The emphasis is on interpretation rather than raw information retrieval. With 50,000 active users, Surf demonstrates practical demand for specialized crypto AI.

What Is Link3?

Link3 serves as the identity and profile layer for the Cyber ecosystem. Think of it as a verified business card for Web3, combining on-chain credentials with off-chain social information.

Launched in July 2022, Link3 now supports over 3,400 verified organizations and 680,000 individual profiles. The platform addresses a persistent problem in crypto: trust. When anyone can create anonymous accounts and projects can rug without consequence, verified identities become valuable.

Profiles on Link3 aggregate wallet verifications, NFT collections, social links, and custom bios into a single page. Features like DAO-verified identities and gated messaging help reduce fraud risks. For context, crypto scams resulted in an estimated $14 billion in losses in 2025 alone.

The platform integrates with over 30 partner projects, enabling use cases from community engagement to monetization tools. Projects like Puffverse have used Link3 for launch activations, while individual creators use it to consolidate their Web3 presence.

What matters most is portability. Link3 profiles work across dApps without users needing to rebuild their identity each time. This aligns with Cyber's broader vision of composable, user-owned data.

Why Does This Matter for Crypto AI?

The crypto AI space is crowded with tools that bolt general-purpose language models onto blockchain data feeds. Most struggle with accuracy because they lack the social layer that gives raw data meaning.

Cyber's thesis is that unifying social and on-chain context is critical for the next generation of crypto applications. When an AI agent can access not just transaction data but also reputation, relationships, and community standing, it can make better decisions.

This positions Cyber for what some call the "agentic economy," where AI agents handle tasks like fund tracing, sentiment analysis, and market research with minimal human intervention. Surf already demonstrates this with its automated report generation and multi-source research capabilities.

Recent collaborations hint at broader ambitions. Surf partnered with Fabric for decentralized robotics applications, suggesting Cyber sees opportunities beyond market analysis.

The Bottom Line

Cyber has spent years building infrastructure while others focused on short-term narratives. The combination of a social data layer, an AI research platform with real traction, and a verified identity system creates a more complete ecosystem than most competitors offer.

Whether this technical foundation translates to sustained adoption remains to be seen. But with over 580,000 X followers, millions of Surf reports generated, and 680,000 Link3 profiles, early traction suggests the market wants what Cyber is building.

For more information, visit the official website at cyber.co and follow @BuildOnCyber on X.

Sources:

• Fortune – Surf $15M funding, user metrics, roadmap
• CoinDesk – Funding details, CAIA benchmark, enterprise plans
• GlobeNewswire – Link3 July 2022 launch
• CNBC – Chainalysis $14B scam losses data
• @BuildOnCyber – Official Cyber X account
• @SurfAI – Official Surf X account, Surf 1.5 announcement
• Link3.to – Platform homepage