“Crypto has an apps problem. AI has a trust problem. But AI can make apps better and crypto can provide the trust. So it’s a match made in heaven.”- Sreeram Kannan, Founder EigenLayer

All apps of the future will use AI. We have seen agentic apps gain some traction, only to have short-lived success in this time of rapid evolution. Trust, or lack of, has often been the nemesis of platforms like Pump.fun, memecoins deployed by known entities and individuals, and even innovative DeFi platforms, while only a handful of crypto apps like Aave, Uniswap, 1inch, etc. have tasted any real success in long-term adoption and usage. Incumbent crypto apps are now looking to use AI agents in their workflows to find product-market fit.

But AI’s biggest problem is trust.

The answer may lie in “verifiability”. If humans can coordinate on a large scale to verify the work done by AI agents, we may potentially have a positive-sum outcome for humanity and AI to co-live and thrive.

Crypto x AI is inevitable for apps of the future.

Eigen literally means “own” in German, and EigenLayer is humanity’s own coordination network. The need for coordination can’t be overstated in a world that’s increasingly, and will be overwhelmingly, run by AI agents. With the number of agents set to exceed the human population in the not-so-distant future, it’s essential for mankind to create a symbiotic relationship with the agents. EigenLayer makes this possible.

EigenLayer operates on the principles of restaking. Proof-of-Stake blockchain networks like Ethereum are secured by validators staking their ETH. When this staked ETH is used to provide network security to another network, in this case, EigenLayer, in return for economic incentives, it’s called restaking. A failure to do so results in the original network stake getting slashed.

One may think of EigenLayer as a “verifiable cloud” with a suite of services called AVS (Autonomous Verifiable Services), that may be called by apps to make commitments to their users.

Incumbent crypto apps may be compared to the web apps of 1995 that had to build their own servers, data storage solutions, payment gateways, etc. In the present world, the average app app makes about 15 cloud service calls to deliver a best-in-class user experience. The era of rolling your own infrastructure has long passed.

The incumbent crypto apps may be compared to the web apps, circa 1995. But the future of apps will be heavily determined and driven by AI agents. Apps could be completely agentic or using AI agents in some form to deliver their promise to the user. For these AI agents to be trusted, a framework has to be laid out in the form of a suite of verifiable services that are autonomous.

“App developers can completely focus on the business logic and user experience when the technical complexities are abstracted away by the services at disposal.”- Nader Dabit, Developer Relations, Eigen Labs

“Furthermore, AVS builders like us need not worry about cryptographic security or having to build our own network of validators for economic security; thanks to EigenLayer’s restaking infra.”- Ashutosh Sahoo, CEO, Zeru

zScore operates on the philosophy of spotlighting real users adding real value to the onchain economy, rather than trying to identify and flag malicious actors or bots.

zScore AVS on EigenLayer

zScore computes reputation at the most elementary level – the wallet address – thereby making it an important primitive for the onchain economy. The life-to-date onchain interactions of a wallet address are fed into a behavior-centric AI neural network that computes the reputation score. The scores are verified by EigenLayer’s network of operators and then published to a public blockchain.

One can think of zScore as karma in the onchain economy.

zScore is a public good, and anyone can check the scores corresponding to a particular wallet address for free. zScores range on a scale of 0 to 1000, and a higher zScore indicates healthy onchain behavior.

The zScore App will also allow users to verify their real-world credentials such as Experian credit scores, citizenship, IRS-registered home address, and others through a zkTLS implementation to enhance their onchain reputation without KYC or having to doxx their social identities; thereby staying true to the ethos of the onchain economy.

zScore is built as a LayerZero OApp, which means that the neural network factors in the behavior of an address across all blockchains supported by LayerZero. Obviously, in addition to that, zScores can be read on any blockchain supported by LayerZero.

Currently, the zScore AVS is backed by cryptoeconomic security of about $2B worth of restaked assets.

A verifiable system to quantify reputation has largely been missing in crypto, leading to a plethora of issues like inefficient distribution of rewards, incentives and NFT mints due to Sybil farming and bot attacks, overcollateralization of loans, capital inefficiency in DeFi, and overall a complete lack of loyalty.

Previous attempts at reputation have been made by Cred, Spectral, Degen Score, and others, but failed to make an impact owing to a lack of verifiability.

The current solutions in the market include Blockchain Bureau, integrated with Etherscan in the newly launched “Cards” tab, but the model is limited to credit scoring, is opaque, and verifiability continues to be a challenge. Other efforts at reputation either rely on hardware interventions, biometrics, DID or social authentication.

The reputation space is hot and a system like zScore, which relies purely on onchain transactions with an option to prove real-world credentials through zkTLS, can be extremely valuable to the entire crypto community.

zScore is currently the only autonomously verifiable service for reputation. Most importantly though, the reputation space is not about competition, as it’s always better to have multiple reputation systems for a healthy onchain economy to thrive.

Since zScore attests real users adding value to the onchain economy, apps and protocols can use it to incentivize genuine users and reward loyalty.

1. Pre-TGE projects can use zScore for airdropping incentives

2. NFT launchpads can use zScore to give out guaranteed whitelists

3. In DeFi, zScore can enable undercollateralized lending, credit-backed money markets, preferential borrow rates, higher LTVs, and more; thereby solving important problems like overcollateralization, capital inefficiency, and loyalty

4. DEXs & perps may offer differential swap rates & leverage based on reputation

By removing wallet balances and transaction sizes from the equation, Zeru makes sure that reputation is a function of time and good behavior; thus making it fairly immune to gamification by Sybil farms and malicious actors.

Do you find resonance with the vision we have laid out? If so, please show your support by including z/acc on your social profiles.

Are you running a DeFi protocol? We invite you for a detailed preview of our methodology behind computing zScore. Tell us what inferences we can draw from the transaction data of your users.

Are you an L1/L2 with an upcoming airdrop? Please speak to us and explore how zScore could assist in rewarding and onboarding real users to your community.

Get in touch with the team via Telegram or Discord to discuss use cases, and tune in for the product lineup of zClaim and zPass!

Contact us:

Zeru Official Chat

Shaping the Future of DeFi: Decentralized Credit Infrastructure for Zero-Collateral Loans Discord: https://discord.gg/yW2BU288Kw 🌟 https://linktr.ee/zerufinance

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