Why did the founder of Zerebro, who created a $800 million market capitalization project choose to commit suicide on a live stream?

Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author｜Wenser

No one expected that on the first day after the holiday, the tragedy of death became a farce of issuing coins again. This time the protagonist is no longer the nameless anonymous Dev, but the well-known AI Agent project Zerebro Jeffy Yu.

Previously, Jeffy Yu had broadcasted suicide related scenes live after pump.fun was restored to live broadcast function. At that time, the market was still half-believing and half-doubted about his excessive behavior. Until today, the information related to the announcement of the obituary platform Legacy spread on a large scale. After a while, many people realized that this genius boy who entered Stanford to learn computers at the age of 15 and made a project worth $800 million at the age of 22 fell, which caused a sigh. Odaily Planet Daily will briefly sort out the incident in this article, hoping that the deceased will rest in peace, the living will be less ridiculed and mocked, and have more understanding and respect.

Zerebro: The former popular AI Agent project, Dev address once made a

profit of nearly $43 million

In November last year, Zerebro took advantage of the AI ​​Agent concept and the "Trump effect" and once became the focus of the crypto market. It belongs to the same track as ai16z and Virtual, and its market value rose to US$800 million in just a few dozen days.

On November 22, 2024, according to monitoring by on-chain data analyst @ai_9684xtpa, Meme coin ZEREBRO Dev spent 5 SOL to buy 153 million ZEREBROs after creating the token on October 25, accounting for 15.32% of the total tokens, and increased his position in 1 SOL again after the token was launched. Subsequently, Dev transferred 40 million ZEREBROs (worth $21.5 million) to Truth Terminal's public address, and has sold 30% of the tokens, with the remaining 79.63 million tokens scattered among four addresses, with a floating profit of $42.96 million. At that time, the market value of ZEREBOR token was about US$500 million.

In late December 2024, Jeffy Yu, who is a Zerebro project, announced a new product plan again, saying that "the team is building a consumer-oriented agent Launchpad Zentients.xyz."

At the beginning of this year, with the proliferation of AI Agent accounts, the spam produced by AI Agent once caused extensive pollution to the content timeline of X platform.

Regarding this issue, Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu posted at the time: "Zerebro is integrating with research data aggregator. We are improving the social media posting style, introducing data aggregation and summary layers in pipeline. X posts will be split. 70% will be generated in the current style (focus on humor), and 30% will be generated in the information data-driven style. We will see how the information flow is planned this week and adjust it if necessary. In the next few days, the changes will start to be reflected in the timeline." In addition, Yu launched a vote asking "As an audience of Zerebro X posts, do you want to see AI, blockchain, or both in the research topics discussed?"

It can be seen that as a project joint creation, Jeffy Yu has given enough respect to the voices and opinions of community members. Perhaps due to this news and the recovery of market sentiment in the AI ​​Agent concept token, the market value of ZEREBRO token once rebounded to US$350 million . In March, AI Agent concept-related tokens rose generally , and ZEREBRO also ranked among the top with a monthly increase of nearly 40%.

However, even such a timely crypto project with the concept of AI Agent is still difficult to survive in a market where tens of thousands of coins are falling. Jeffy Yu's subsequent suicide may have several connections with the crypto market that has greatly alienated everyone. But judging from Zerebro's previous project website , perhaps Jeffy Yu had an answer.

Zerebro Dev 's Self-End and Crypto Experiment: Digital Legacoins

On May 4, Zerebro's Jeffy Yu's "Suicide Live" on pump.fun attracted widespread attention. Previously, the live broadcast function of pump.fun has experienced a series of chaos, including "Dev used spontaneous combustion as a gimmick to issue coins", "mother and son erotic hints live broadcast", "women's naked porn live broadcast", etc.

According to some members of the encryption community, Jeffy Yu was extremely calm at that time. The last shot of the live broadcast screen pressed his gun against his jaw. With a gunshot, the picture turned black, leaving the shocked audience at a loss.

In this way, the news of "the well-known project Dev live suicide" spread wildly, which once triggered heated discussions in the crypto community. However, since Jeffy Yu's associated wallet address was still in operation, some people suspected that this move may be similar to the previous live broadcast scripts that have been entertainment until death, just to attract attention and take the opportunity to hype, so as to attract market capital attention and attention.

It has to be said that in such an industry driven by attention economy, it has become a subconscious idea for many people to judge "event-driven hype" in advance.

Until today, with the further release of the announcement-related interface of the obituary platform Legacy, the news that Jeffy Yu, who was only 22, died in May 2025 was finally confirmed. Website information shows that Jeffy has been a technology fan since childhood and entered Stanford University to study computer science at the age of 15. He was 19 years old as a full-time software engineer in Santa Cruz. Two years later, he co-founded a company with others and expanded the company to $800 million in less than six months.

Later, someone dug up a Mirror article published by Jeffy Yu on May 4, which proposed a concept called "Legacoins" (Odaily Planet Daily Note: literally translated as Legacoins, and can be understood as Legacoins, and can be understood as Legacoins) .

He noted : "Legacoins' functionality is based on the voluntary commitment of the developers of the coin that they agree to strictly acquire and never sell or trade these assets. After the holder dies, their holdings will be permanently locked into the blockchain, thus establishing a lasting minimum value threshold. I am the floor of the permanent. With the recent administrative restructuring, the initiative now highlights tokens like ZEREBRO and OPAIUM as an example of demonstrating this framework. Adopting this philosophy ensures that developers of these tokens provide sustained cultural and economic value without participating in speculative or competitive trading dynamics. I don 't trade, I just build, I just create... May we always exist, achieve eternity through memes. When we really die, it's time for us to be forgotten."

The words show the style of technical idealists and crypto-social experimenters. And in the obituary, Jeffy Yu 's motto is also extremely touching.

San Francisco Chronicle released on May 5, 2025

The crypto market, which only judges heroes by liquidity, may not be able to accommodate such a pure soul, so he chose to say goodbye to the fanatical and fast-decaying market in this way.

After the news of Jeffy Yu's obituary spread further, the Meme currency market is still closely behind - the market value of ZEREBRO DEV-related token LLJEFFY, which has attracted market attention due to the "cyber-burning paper" operation of Dev's buying and destroying coins, once exceeded US$5 million, and is currently temporarily reported at US$2.6 million.

In the crypto market where liquidity never sleeps, Jeffy Yu may not be the last "martyr" like Hulezhi will not be the last "E Guard". Meme coins have thus become the carrier of a character's spiritual symbol, and in a sense it has also become the negative film of market memory.

But no matter what, I hope that there will be fewer tokens that use this as a hot topic in the future and more practical measures to pay attention to the mental health of the industry population. Until the last person forgets a Meme, its value may face the most real test.

Recommended to watch the video of Jeffy Yu being interviewed by OD Labs during his lifetime: https://x.com/mikadontlouz/status/1866957852092342678