Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina）
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010）
No one expected that on the first day after the holiday, another tragic death would turn into a token drama, and this time the protagonist was not an obscure anonymous developer, but Jeffy Yu, co-founder of the well-known AI Agent project Zerebro.
Previously, Jeffy Yu had live-streamed suicide-related content after the restoration of the live streaming function on pump.fun. At the time, the market was skeptical of his extreme behavior, until today when the obituary platform Legacy publicly announced related information, people suddenly realized that this genius who entered Stanford at 15 and created an $800 million project at 22 had fallen, evoking sighs. Odaily will briefly review this incident, hoping the deceased rest in peace, and that the living show more understanding and respect, less mockery.
Zerebro: Once a Popular AI Agent Project, Dev Address Once Gained Nearly $43 Million in Profits
In November last year, Zerebro became a focus of the crypto market riding the AI Agent concept and "Trump effect", comparable to ai16z and Virtual, and its market value quickly rose to $800 million in just a few dozen days.
On November 22, 2024, according to on-chain data analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, the ZEREBRO Meme coin Dev created the token on October 25, spent 5 SOL to buy 153 million ZEREBRO tokens, accounting for 15.32% of the total supply, and added another 1 SOL after the token's launch. Subsequently, Dev transferred 40 million ZEREBRO tokens (worth $21.5 million) to the Truth Terminal public address, having sold 30% of the tokens, with the remaining 79.63 million tokens spread across four addresses, gaining $42.96 million in profits. At that time, ZEREBRO's market value was around $500 million.
In late December 2024, Jeffy Yu, co-founder of Zerebro, announced a new product plan, stating that "the team is building a consumer-facing agent Launchpad Zentients.xyz".
Early this year, with the proliferation of AI Agent accounts, garbage information generated by AI Agents once widely polluted the content timeline on X platform.
Addressing this issue, Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu wrote: "Zerebro is integrating with research data aggregators. We are improving social media posting style by introducing data aggregation and summary layers in the pipeline. X posts will be split. 70% will be generated in the current style (focusing on humor), 30% will be generated in an information-driven style. We will review the curation of the information flow this week and adjust if necessary. Changes will begin to be reflected in the timeline in the coming days." Additionally, Yu initiated a poll asking, "As an audience of Zerebro X posts, would you like to see AI, blockchain, or both in the research topics discussed?"
It's clear that Jeffy Yu, as a project co-founder, gave sufficient respect to community members' voices and opinions. Possibly influenced by this news and the market sentiment recovery of AI Agent concept tokens, ZEREBRO's market value once rose to $350 million. In March, AI Agent concept-related tokens surged, with ZEREBRO ranking among the top with nearly a 40% monthly increase.
However, even such a timely AI Agent crypto project could not remain unaffected in a market where all coins were falling. Jeffy Yu's subsequent suicide action might be somewhat related to the crypto market that extremizes everyone. But looking at Zerebro's previously pop-style project website, perhaps Jeffy Yu had already found his answer.
Zerebro Dev's Self-Termination and Crypto Experiment: Digital Heritage Token Legacoins
On May 4th, Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu's "suicide live stream" on pump.fun attracted widespread attention. Previously, pump.fun's live streaming function had experienced a series of chaotic incidents, including "Dev launching tokens with self-immolation as a gimmick", "mother-son sexual innuendo live stream", "female nude pornographic live stream".
According to some crypto community members' recollections, Jeffy Yu appeared extremely calm at the time. The last scene of the live stream was him pointing a gun at his chin, and with a gunshot, the screen went black, leaving the shocked viewers at a loss.
Thus, the news of a "well-known project Dev live-streaming suicide" spread quickly, sparking intense discussions in the crypto community. However, since Jeffy Yu's associated wallet address continued to have operations afterwards, some suspected this might be similar to previous "entertainment to death" live stream scripts, merely a way to attract eyeballs and market funds' attention.
It must be said that in an attention economy-driven industry, presuming everything as "event-driven speculation" has become an unconscious thought for many.
Until today, with the further disclosure of the Legacy obituary platform, the news of 22-year-old Jeffy Yu's death in 2025 was finally confirmed. The website information shows that Jeffy was a tech enthusiast from a young age, entering Stanford University to study computer science at 15. At 19, he was already a full-time software engineer in Santa Cruz. Two years later, he co-founded a company and expanded its scale to $800 million in less than six months.
Subsequently, someone dug up a Mirror article Jeffy Yu published on May 4th, proposing a concept called "Legacoins".
He pointed out: "The functionality of Legacoins is based on the developers' voluntary commitment to strictly acquire and never sell or trade these assets. After the holder's death, their holdings will be permanently locked on the blockchain, thereby establishing a persistent minimum value threshold. I am the permanent floor. With recent administrative restructuring, this initiative now highlights tokens like ZEREBRO and OPAIUM as exemplars of this framework. Adopting this concept can ensure that the token developers provide continuous cultural and economic value without participating in speculative or competitive trading dynamics. I do not trade, I only build, I only create... May we forever exist through memes, achieving eternity. We truly die when we are forgotten."
Between the lines, he displays the style of a technological idealist and crypto social experimenter. The motto Jeffy Yu left in the obituary is also extremely touching.
Published by San Francisco Chronicle on May 5, 2025
Perhaps the crypto market, which only sees heroes through liquidity, cannot accommodate such a pure soul, so he chose to bid farewell to this passionate yet ephemeral market in this way.
After the further spread of Jeffy Yu's obituary, the meme coin market continues to follow suit - the ZEREBRO DEV related token LLJEFFY, which attracted market attention due to the "cyber paper burning" operation of Dev buying and destroying coins, once broke through a market value of $5 million and is currently reported at $2.6 million.
In the crypto market where liquidity never sleeps, Jeffy Yu may not be the last "martyr", just like Hulezhi was not the last "E soldier". Meme coins have thus become a spiritual symbol carrier of a person, and in a certain sense, also become the negative of market memory.
However, no matter what, we hope that there will be fewer tokens that use this as a hype point in the future, and more practical measures to focus on the mental health of industry personnel, until the last person forgets a meme, its value may usher in the most authentic test.
Recommended to watch the interview video of Jeffy Yu before his death by OD Labs:https://x.com/mikadontlouz/status/1866957852092342678
