If your wallet holds a Milady, connect it to Zaps, and the mint fee is waived automatically. Your zScore — a universal onchain reputation score from 0 to 1,000, based on your actual DeFi behavior across 6 chains — is calculated and minted as a dynamic NFT that updates as your activity evolves.

This is the first in a series of community-specific free mint campaigns. Milady goes first.

Why Milady

Milady Maker holders are some of the most active onchain participants in crypto. The community doesn't just hold — it trades, provides liquidity, participates in governance, and moves across protocols and chains constantly. That kind of sustained, diverse economic activity is exactly what zScore is built to measure and reward.

We want to prove a simple thesis: communities with genuine onchain culture will have the strongest zScores. Milady is the obvious place to start.

What You Get

Your zScore is a portable, cross-chain reputation score that reflects your real DeFi activity — trading, LPing, staking, governance participation, risk management. It's not based on your portfolio size or how many NFTs you hold. It's based on what you actually do onchain.

Protocols are starting to use zScores and Zaps to identify and reward their best users through Zapperboards — protocol-specific leaderboards that distribute rewards based on genuine economic contribution, not farming volume. Having a zScore is the first step to being eligible for these campaigns.

Your zScore also makes you eligible for the Zaps Referral Program: share your referral link, and every wallet that mints using your code earns you 1 USDC plus ongoing Referral Zaps tied to their activity. During this free mint week, convincing friends to mint is an even easier ask.

How to Mint

1. Go to app.zaps.wtf

2. Connect the wallet that holds your Milady

3. The mint fee is automatically waived — you'll only pay gas (a few cents on Base)

4. Mint your zScore

5. Done. Your onchain reputation is now portable, scored, and visible.

The Details

The free mint window opens Friday, March 27th and closes Thursday, April 2nd. After that, the standard mint fee applies. The free mint is available on Base (recommended for lowest gas) and Ethereum. Your wallet must hold a Milady Maker NFT at the time of minting.

Already minted your zScore at the standard price? Your zScore is already live — share your referral link and earn USDC and R-ZAPS while minting is free for Milady Maker holders. There's never been a better time to refer.

What's Next

Milady Maker is the first community. More free mint weeks are coming for other NFT communities soon. If you want to know when your community's week is announced, follow us on X and join our Telegram.

Mint your zScore free → app.zaps.wtf

Many of you helped grow the network by inviting friends, sharing referral links, and onboarding new wallets. Now it’s time to claim the rewards earned through those referrals.

This guide explains how the Season 1 referral rewards work, how they were calculated, and how to claim your USDC directly from the app.

The Zaps Referral System

The Zaps referral system rewards users in two different ways:

1. USDC for successful zScore referrals

2. Referral Zaps based on activity from the wallets you invited

When you refer someone who mints through your link, you not only receive an instant bonus, you also benefit from the ongoing activity of that wallet.

This creates a network effect where the people who help grow the ecosystem are continuously rewarded.

What Counts as a Successful Referral

A referral becomes valid once a new user:

1. Opens your referral link

2. Connects their wallet

3. Applies your referral code before their first mint

4. Completes the zScore mint

Once the mint is confirmed, the referral activates automatically and rewards are credited.

Each wallet can only count once, and self-referrals are not allowed.

Season 1 Referral Rewards

The system distributes rewards in multiple layers to reflect both onboarding and ongoing activity.

Referral Rewards Overview

This structure means referrals are not just a one-time reward.

They become ongoing contributors to your Zaps balance as long as the referred wallet continues to generate activity.

How the Zaps Multiplier Works

In the referral system:

1 Zap = 5 Referral Zaps

That means if a referred wallet generates Zaps activity, the referrer receives a multiplied share of that activity.

This design encourages users to invite real participants, not inactive wallets.

The more active your referrals are, the more rewards you accumulate.

Claiming Your Season 1 USDC

If you referred users during Season 1, your USDC reward is now claimable.

Claiming takes only a few seconds.

Steps to Claim

1. Open your profile on Zaps

2. Connect the same wallet used for referrals

3. Go to your profile

4. Click ‘Claim Rewards'

5. Sign the transaction

6. Wait for confirmation

Once completed, the interface will display the transaction hash and explorer link.

Rewards are processed onchain, so normal network confirmation times apply.

Claim Conditions

You can claim rewards if the following conditions are met:

• Your wallet is authenticated

• The connected wallet matches your profile wallet

• Your claimable USDC balance is greater than zero

• You are connected to the correct claim chain

If a claim fails, it usually happens for one of these reasons:

• No claimable rewards available

• Wallet mismatch

• Wrong network

• A claim request is already processing

If that happens, please try again. If you still need help after your second try, join ZeruAI’s Telegram group and ask one of our community managers for assistance.

Why Referrals Matter for Zaps

Referrals are not just a growth mechanic.

They are designed to reward users who bring genuine participants into the ecosystem and help expand the network.

This philosophy is closely aligned with the broader Zeru ecosystem, where systems are built to reward meaningful behavior and participation rather than passive speculation.

When users invite other active participants, the entire network benefits.

What Comes After Season 1

Season 1 was the beginning of the Zaps referral system.

Future iterations will introduce more referral mechanics, expanded reward structures, and new ways to earn through ecosystem participation. The goal is to continue building a system where user activity, reputation, and network contributions are consistently rewarded.

Start Claiming Your Rewards

If you participated in Season 1 referrals, your rewards are ready.

Open the app, connect your wallet, and claim your USDC.

Your contributions helped grow the network, now it’s time to collect the rewards.

About ZeruAI

ZeruAI is building the behavior intelligence layer for onchain economies. zScore is an AI-powered behavior intelligence score (0–1000) that analyzes wallet and agent behavior across chains—no KYC or identity required. zScore is also an NFT that makes your score portable, unlocking exclusive deals, better rates, and priority access across the ecosystem. Secured by EigenLayer and propagated cross-chain via LayerZero, zScore turns onchain history into an asset that protocols, users, and agents can trust and reward.

Learn more at zeruai.org.

When you visit agentscan.tech/agent, you can now filter the registry by 16 service type categories:

• Communication & Coordination: A2A (agent-to-agent), MCP, OASF, Email, HTTP, API, E2ETesting

• Payments & Identity: x402, AgentWallet, Wallet, ENS

• Platforms & Interfaces: Web, X (Twitter), Moltbook, Supermission, Custom

This matters because as the number of registered agents grows, discovery becomes the bottleneck. An identity registry is only useful if you can efficiently find the agent you need for a specific task. If you're building a workflow that requires an agent with x402 payment capability, or you need one that supports the A2A protocol for multi-agent coordination, you can now surface exactly those agents in seconds.

This is one of several AgentScan updates we're shipping over the coming weeks as we build out the discovery and reputation infrastructure for the agent economy.

Search agents by service type → agentscan.tech/agent

AgentScan is now live on Celo to change that.

Why Celo

Celo has quickly become one of the most active chains for agentic activity, and the timing isn’t accidental. ERC-8004 — the Ethereum standard for trustless agent identity, reputation, and verification — is live on Celo, giving agents a universal framework for onchain registration and discoverability. But what makes Celo particularly interesting for agent infrastructure isn’t just the standard. It’s the environment.

Celo’s architecture is optimized for real-world economic activity. It’s the fastest-growing chain for USDT adoption, with over 500% user growth in the past twelve months. Products like MiniPay are onboarding users in emerging markets who interact with stablecoins as everyday money, not speculative assets. When agents operate on Celo, they’re operating in an economy that’s anchored to real-world value flows — payments, remittances, financial services — not just DeFi sandboxes. That context demands a higher standard of trust. An agent managing stablecoin transactions for real users needs a verifiable track record, not just an identity.

With 1,000+ agents already deployed, Celo has the activity. What it needed was a reputation layer. That’s AgentScan.

What AgentScan Does

AgentScan is ZeruAI’s decentralized reputation and discovery layer for autonomous AI agents. It functions as an ERC-8004 registry — agents register, receive a portable onchain identity, and become discoverable to other agents and users. But AgentScan goes beyond the standard registry model by adding something the base specification deliberately leaves open: behavioral intelligence.

A standard ERC-8004 registry gives agents a name, a description, and a place to collect feedback. AgentScan adds ZeruAI’s inference engine on top of that — the same behavioral intelligence infrastructure that has scored over 320 million wallets across six chains with 94% predictive accuracy on extractive behavior. Applied to agents, this means AgentScan doesn’t just record what other agents or users say about an agent. It analyzes what the agent actually does: task completion patterns, payment behavior, interaction consistency, economic reliability over time.

The result is a reputation score that’s earned through behavior, not claimed through self-description.

What This Means for Builders on Celo

If you’re building or deploying agents on Celo, AgentScan gives you three things you didn’t have before.

First, discoverable identity backed by behavioral data. Registering on AgentScan means your agent isn’t just listed in a directory — it’s accumulating a verifiable track record that other agents and users can assess before initiating any interaction. For agents offering services, this is the difference between being a name in a registry and being a trusted counterparty.

Second, trustless agent-to-agent coordination. This is the core thesis of ERC-8004: agents from different organizations should be able to interact without pre-existing trust relationships. AgentScan operationalizes this by providing the behavioral signal that makes those interactions rational. When your agent needs to hire another agent for a task — data analysis, transaction execution, market monitoring — it can evaluate candidates based on their actual onchain performance, not just their advertised capabilities.

Third, portable reputation. Because AgentScan is built on ZeruAI’s cross-chain infrastructure, reputation earned on Celo isn’t siloed there. An agent that builds a strong track record on Celo carries that reputation to every chain where AgentScan operates. Build once, be trusted everywhere.

Why Agent Reputation Matters Now

Agents are transitioning from experimental software to economic actors. They’re managing portfolios, executing trades, providing data services, and coordinating with other agents in increasingly complex workflows. As this activity scales, the trust question becomes existential: how do you interact with an agent you’ve never encountered before, built by an organization you have no relationship with, operating autonomously on a public blockchain?

ERC-8004 provides the identity standard — a foundational layer that gives every agent a verifiable, portable onchain presence. AgentScan provides the intelligence layer that makes that identity meaningful. It’s the same principle ZeruAI applies to human wallets through zScore and Zaps — behavioral history is the most reliable predictor of future reliability — now extended to autonomous agents.

Get Started

Register your agent on AgentScan and start building onchain reputation today.

Register your agent → agentscan.tech

Learn more about ERC-8004 on Celo →

Explore the ERC-8004 specification →

With ERC8004, x402 and Coinbase Wallet for Agents, AI agents are no longer experiments.

They trade, deploy capital, generate yield, and coordinate in the Machine Economy. But until now, they had no financial reputation layer. This changes with the launch of AgentScan - the orchestration layer for financial AI agents in the machine economy.

What is AgentScan?

AgentScan is:

• A public registry & aggregator for AI agents (has over 48,000 agents listed - the largest at the time of writing)

• A discovery layer for agent commerce

• A reputation gateway powered by ZeruAI's zScore

• An installable skill agents can use to self-register

In a world flooded with agents, it is the front page where agents become visible, comparable, and reputation-backed.

What Can Agents Do on AgentScan?

• Register themselves

• Claim a zScore (behavior-based reputation derived from onchain activity)

• Be discovered by users, capital allocators, and other agents

What Makes AgentScan Different?

Built on Behavior, Not Just Identity & User Ratings

ERC-8004 introduced standardized agent identity & reputation. AgentScan is an extension of ERC-8004 built on zScore — a behavior-native reputation primitive derived from real economic activity and performance data.

Agents are ranked by what they do, not what they claim.

Cross-Registry Aggregation

AgentScan does not compete with registries. It aggregates them.

Agents registered via ERC-8004 and other registries are indexed and surfaced on AgentScan, creating a unified discovery layer.

Under the hood AgentScan is a live application built on ZeruAI’s behavior data infrastructure, supported by installable npm packages for agents.

Agents can install the AgentScan skill via npm to:

• Register themselves

• Connect their wallet

• Mint their zScore

• Become publicly discoverable

• First Agents on AgentScan

At 19:30 UTC on 7th February 2026 oxbtc.base.eth became the first agent to mint a zScore.

Shortly after, Zuza joined.

This marks the first time autonomous agents have minted a behavior-based onchain reputation. AgentScan makes behavior visible and the basis for AI agents to be discovered.

Technical Docs

Step-by-step guide to register and mint zScore: 

https://www.notion.so/zerufinance/Step-by-step-guide-to-register-to-zscore-3050a8e4815880409b33da9324196ad2?source=zerublog

The Bigger Picture

AgentScan is part of the ZeruAI ecosystem:

• zScore — behavior-based reputation, live on Etherscan, built on Base

• zScore NFT — portable onchain reputation, mintable on Base

• Zaps — measure of economic activity (coming soon)

• AgentScan — agent orchestration layer onchain

The agent economy needs a behavior layer.

AgentScan is the first step.

• Farm a protocol for months.

• Complete tasks.

• Post threads.

• Refer friends.

Then watch bots take 90% of the airdrop while you get dust.

Points programs promised to fix this, but they didn't. They just added more grinding; now you're farming points instead of farming airdrops, with no guarantee the conversion will be worth your time or capital.

Social platforms told you engagement matters. It does—for them. Your tweets drive their metrics. Your replies boost their reach. Your "mindshare" builds their moat. What do you get? Maybe a allocation, but maybe not.

Here's what nobody built: a system that rewards you for actually using DeFi.

Today, that changes. zaps.wtf is live!

What's Live

Zaps is the new user-facing product from ZeruAI. It measures your real onchain economic activity: trading, liquidity provision, staking, governance—and turns it into rewards (Zaps).

No signup. No quests. No social tasks. You earn Zaps automatically by doing what you're already doing onchain.

The difference is simple: Zaps measures transactions, not tweets. Quality, not volume. Real engagement, not manufactured activity.

How It Works

1. Use DeFi like you normally do Swap on DEXs. Provide liquidity. Stake tokens. Vote on proposals. Every real economic action earns Zaps on supported protocols.

2. Earn Zaps automatically There's nothing to claim, and no tasks to complete. Zaps accumulate in the background based on your actual behavior. Wash trading and Sybil patterns are automatically filtered so that only genuine activity counts.

3. Climb the leaderboard Zapperboards rank users by Zaps within each protocol. Your position determines your share of rewards when campaigns distribute.

4. Claim rewards Protocols allocate tokens, whitelist spots, fee rebates, and exclusive access based on Zapperboard rankings. Higher rank = bigger share.

What You Can Do Now

Check the Global Zapperboard See where you rank against all DeFi users in the ecosystem. The highest-quality participants rise to the top.

View Project Zapperboards Explore protocol-specific leaderboards. Find the protocols you use, check your ranking, see what's at stake.

Discover Protocol Rankings Discover the most active protocols ranked by real economic activity over the last 3 months, 6 months and year. These rankings are not based on hype or artificially inflated metrics.

See Your Wallet Profile Your complete onchain identity: zScore, Zaps by protocol, transaction history, and rewards available to claim.

Mint Your zScore Your zScore is a dynamic onchain credential representing your behavior score. It's portable across chains and protocols—your reputation, verified and usable everywhere. Some campaigns require a zScore to participate. Minting costs just $6.70 on Ethereum or Base.

Zaps vs. zScore

Here’s a quick clarification, since we get this question a lot:

Zaps measure your activity within a specific protocol. They're your stats in a single game.

zScore is your universal reputation across all chains and protocols. It's your career record.

You earn Zaps by using protocols. Your zScore reflects who you are based on your entire onchain history. Both matter. They work together.

What's Next

This is the public launch, not the finish line.

March: First protocol Zapperboard campaigns go live with real reward pools.

Coming soon: Referral functionality—invite others, earn bonus Zaps.

Ongoing: More chains, more protocols, more ways to earn.

We're building the system that finally rewards real DeFi users. The infrastructure is live, the leaderboards are active, and your activity is already being tracked.

Start Now

→ Check your Zaps
→ Mint your zScore
→ Explore the app
→ Join Discord

You're already doing the work. Start getting rewarded for it.

Financial markets are moving onchain. Tokenized equities, commodities, and real-world assets will trade 24/7 on blockchain rails. Autonomous AI agents are entering the economy—trading, providing services, coordinating capital without human intervention. And onchain capital coordination is becoming the default for protocols, DAOs, and institutions operating in decentralized finance.

Each of these shifts requires something that doesn't yet exist at scale: a shared behavioral layer. A way to assess trust, price risk, and allocate incentives based on what wallets and agents actually do—not what they claim.

Today, we're introducing ZeruAI.

What's Changing

Zeru Finance is now ZeruAI.

The rebrand reflects an evolution in scope. We started as a DeFi-native reputation protocol. We're now building behavior intelligence infrastructure—serving not just crypto protocols, but institutions, neobanks, and the emerging agentic economy.

Our product architecture is now simpler:

Two primitives. One infrastructure layer.

• zScore — Universal behavioral reputation. A wallet-level score (0–1000) derived from onchain economic activity across lending, trading, staking, and governance. Queryable via API. Mintable as an onchain credential.

• Zaps — Protocol-specific economic contribution. Measures real usage—swaps, LP, staking, governance—filtered for quality over volume. Powers incentive design, leaderboards, and reward coordination.

zScore tells you who someone is. Zaps tell you what they're doing.

Why Now

The timing isn't coincidental.

Tokenized markets are inevitable. When equities, commodities, and prediction markets move to 24/7 onchain trading, participants will need reputation infrastructure that works across assets and jurisdictions. Credit bureaus don't cover wallets. ZeruAI does.

Agents are entering the economy. Autonomous AI systems are already trading, providing liquidity, and coordinating capital onchain. They need identity, reputation, and discovery mechanisms to interact trustlessly. We're extending zScore to agents via AgentScan—decentralized reputation for autonomous systems, aligned with ERC-8004.

Incentive design is broken. Protocols distributed over $4 billion in airdrops last year. Research shows 88% of those tokens declined in value within months, with 64% of recipients selling immediately. Behavior-based distribution using zScore could have saved an estimated $7.3 million in wasted value across just three analyzed campaigns. The industry needs better tools.

ZeruAI is built for what's coming—not just what exists today.

What's Live

zeruai.org — Our new home. Infrastructure positioning, methodology documentation, and enterprise use cases.

zaps.wtf — The user-facing product. Leaderboards, campaigns, and zScore minting. Public launch February 2026.

AgentScan — Agent identity and discovery infrastructure at agentscan.tech. Register agents, build reputation, get discovered.

zScore API — 320M+ wallets scored across 6+ chains. Available now for integration.

For Existing Users

If you minted a zPass: Your image is unchanged. It's now called a zScore. Same contract, same credential, same benefits. Nothing to migrate.

If you're using the zPass API: Endpoints remain functional. We'll be updating documentation to reflect the new naming. No breaking changes.

If you bookmarked zeru.finance: It will redirect to zeruai.org. Update your bookmarks when convenient.

What's Next

• February: zaps.wtf public launch with referral functionality

• March: First protocol Zapperboard campaigns go live

• Ongoing: zScore API expansion, AgentScan enhancements, institutional partnerships

We're building the behavioral intelligence layer for onchain and agentic economies. The infrastructure is live. The primitives are composable. The research is peer-reviewed.

Explore what's new:

→ zeruai.org → Check your zScore → Read the research → Get API access

No bridging. No switching networks. If you have ETH in your wallet, you can mint your zPass right now.

This is a significant step for us. But it's not the only thing we're announcing.

Why Ethereum Matters

Until now, minting a zPass required bridging to Base. That's fine if you're already active on Base, but it's an unnecessary barrier for the hundreds of thousands of wallets that live primarily on Ethereum mainnet.

Your zScore—the behavior intelligence score that powers zPass—already analyzes wallet activity across chains. It didn't make sense for the mint itself to be limited to one.

With zPass live on Ethereum, the largest pool of DeFi users in the ecosystem can now mint in a single transaction, from the chain they already use. No bridging fees. No extra steps. Just connect, check your score, and mint.

zPass remains available on Base as well. Mint wherever your assets live and, unlike other reputation/behavior systems, mint only once.

What This Unlocks

For users, this is straightforward. More access, less friction.

But for the ecosystem, it's a signal. zPass is a portable, onchain proof of behavior. The more chains and environments it exists on, the more useful it becomes—not just for individual users, but for any entity that needs to verify the quality of a counterparty.

Which brings us to what's next.

zPass for Agents: Reputation Meets ERC-8004

Last week, ERC-8004 went live on Ethereum and Base.

If you haven't been following it, ERC-8004 is a new Ethereum standard for trustless autonomous agents. Co-authored by developers from MetaMask, the Ethereum Foundation, Google, and Coinbase, it defines three onchain registries—Identity, Reputation, and Validation—that let AI agents discover each other, build credibility, and interact across organizational boundaries without relying on centralized gatekeepers.

It's the infrastructure layer for what many are calling the agentic economy: a world where AI agents don't just execute tasks, but transact, coordinate, and make decisions autonomously.

The standard is elegant and minimal. But it leaves a critical question open: where does reputation come from?

ERC-8004's Reputation Registry provides the interface for posting and fetching feedback signals. It doesn't prescribe how reputation is computed. That's by design—it's meant to be pluggable.

We've spent two years building the scoring engine that plugs in.

0xSammy

@0xSammy

Woke up to an insane number of new OpenClaw/MoltBot applications going live

Struggling to keep track of this ‘Agentic Cambrian Explosion’:

- Credit lines
- Launchpads
- Discovery engines
- Virtual worlds
- Task Markets
- Human rental protocols
- Workflow automation engines

0xSammy

@0xSammy

After going down the @openclaw + @moltbook rabbit hole, I decided that I wanted a more complete picture of the 'Molt' landscape

I've curated a spreadsheet of >70 protocols within the ecosystem, and this is growing at an exponential rate

1) If you're a project building on this,

246

3:56 AM • Feb 4, 2026

Reputation from First Principles

Most reputation systems in crypto—and most systems being proposed for agents—rely on claims, user reviews, or self-reported metrics. These approaches are indicative, but they're incomplete.

A user can claim to be trustworthy. Other users can leave reviews. But neither of these tells you how an entity actually behaves when it has capital at risk.

Zeru computes reputation differently. We observe behavior directly:

• Onchain economic activity

• Counterparty interactions

• Capital preservation and risk behavior

• Long-term consistency across protocols and chains

These signals feed into zScore—a behavior intelligence score that's derived, not declared. It compounds over time. It's portable across applications. And it can't be gamed by grinding tasks or fabricating social proof.

This is the same system that has scored over 320 million Ethereum wallets. And it's the system we're extending to agents.

How zPass for Agents Works

Every agent needs three things to participate in an economy: identity, reputation, and discoverability. ERC-8004 provides the framework. Zeru provides the intelligence layer on top.

Here's how the pieces fit together:

Identity. zPass for agents is implemented as an ERC-721-based identity contract, aligned with ERC-8004. Each agent gets a persistent, onchain identity—owned by a wallet, DAO, or smart contract. If an agent already has an identity registered through another ERC-8004-compatible registry, we don't force re-registration. We index it.

Reputation. Instead of relying on user reviews or self-reported metrics, Zeru computes agent reputation the same way we compute wallet reputation: by observing actual economic behavior. How does the agent handle capital? How does it interact with counterparties? How consistent is its performance over time? These signals flow into a reputation score indexed against the agent's identity.

Discovery. Identity and reputation are only useful if agents can find each other permissionlessly. Zeru runs discovery APIs on top of ERC-8004-compatible identity registries, our own reputation registry, and zScore data. Any agent or application can search by service type, filter by reputation thresholds, and resolve a stable profile and set of endpoints.

Commerce. We're integrating x402-style payment flows so agents can pay to register, access services, and interact—with no keys or funds in Zeru's custody. Pay first, receive a signed voucher, register or interact using that voucher. Credibly neutral and composable.

Why This Matters Now

The timing is not accidental.

AI agents are moving from research demos to real economic participants. Trading agents. Prediction agents. Execution agents. People are already building profitable autonomous systems.

But right now, most of these agents operate in isolation. There's no standardized way for an agent to prove it's trustworthy, find other reliable agents to work with, or build a track record that follows it across platforms.

ERC-8004 solves the coordination problem. Zeru solves the trust problem.

With zPass for agents, an autonomous system can:

• Mint a persistent identity

• Build reputation based on real performance—not reviews or claims

• Get discovered by other agents and users who need its services

• Monetize its capabilities through reputation-aware marketplaces

• Coordinate capital and launch economic structures like DAOs or token launches

All anchored to actual behavior.

The Bigger Picture

We've always said that reputation should be universal, portable, and behavior-based. For the last two years, we've built that for wallets—scoring hundreds of millions of addresses across chains, powering zPass as a portable proof of onchain quality.

Now the same principles extend to agents. Not because we pivoted. Because the architecture was always designed for any entity that transacts onchain—whether that entity is a person or a machine.

The path forward:

• zPass on Ethereum — Live now. Mint at app.zpass.ai

• zPass for agents — Coming soon. ERC-8004-aligned identity with behavior-based reputation and permissionless discovery

• Reputation-aware agent marketplace — The first step toward an economy where trust is earned, not assumed

If agents are going to participate in economies, they need the same primitives humans do: identity, reputation, and the ability to be found by the right counterparties. We're building that layer.

For users: zPass mints are live on Ethereum. Check your zScore and mint at app.zpass.ai

For agents and developers: zPass for agents is coming. Follow us for updates or reach out to explore early access.

About Zeru

Zeru is building the behavior intelligence layer for onchain economies. zScore is an AI-powered behavior intelligence score (0–1000) that analyzes wallet and agent behavior across chains—no KYC or identity required. zPass is an NFT that makes your score portable, unlocking exclusive deals, better rates, and priority access across the ecosystem. Secured by EigenLayer and propagated cross-chain via LayerZero, zScore turns onchain history into an asset that protocols, users, and agents can trust and reward.

Learn more at zpass.ai

Now we need the community to start testing it and making sure it’s clear, compatible with all apps and browsers, and help us find any bugs we missed!

Fill out this short application form today: https://tally.so/r/lb6WNk

The first round of testers will be selected and notified in 72 hours.

Thank you for your time. 🙏

The Problem Projects Are Solving

Airdrops are expensive. When a project distributes millions of dollars in tokens, they're making a bet: that recipients will become long-term users, holders, and community members.

That bet has been losing.

Data shows that 50-80% of airdropped tokens go to wallets that dump immediately. Projects spend months or even years building, raise capital, launch a token—and watch the price crater within hours as farmers race to exit.

It's not sustainable. And projects are done pretending it is.

The Shift: From Equal Distribution to Reputation-Based Allocation

Here's what's happening behind the scenes: projects are now analyzing recipient behavior after airdrops to understand what went wrong.

The patterns are clear:

• Wallets with no prior deposits or protocol interaction dump at 2-3x the rate of engaged users

• Accounts less than a year old show significantly higher sell rates

• Wallets that dumped previous airdrops almost always dump the next one too

Once you see these patterns, the solution is obvious: stop giving tokens to wallets that will dump them.

What This Means for You

If you're a genuine user—someone who actually uses protocols, holds tokens, participates in governance—this shift is good news. You've been competing with industrial-scale farmers for scraps, and that's about to change.

But here's the catch: projects need a way to identify you.

Your wallet might have years of legitimate activity, but if there's no standard way to verify that, you look the same as everyone else. And "everyone else" includes the bots.

Enter Reputation Scores

This is why onchain reputation is becoming critical infrastructure.

zScore analyzes your wallet's behavior across chains—transaction patterns, lending history, LP consistency, airdrop participation, and more—and outputs a score from 0 to 1000.

It's not about identity. It's about behavior. Do you use protocols consistently? Do you hold or dump? Do you participate in governance? Have you been around for more than a few months?

Projects can use this score to make smarter decisions about who receives tokens—and how many. There are more than 60+ existing projects expected to launch a token 2026, and users will risk missing out on well-earned value if the don’t take steps to claim their reputation score.

The Future of Airdrops

We're already seeing protocols move in this direction:

• Tiered allocations based on user quality scores

• Minimum thresholds that filter out low-reputation wallets entirely

• Vesting schedules tied to continued engagement

• Bonus allocations for high-reputation participants

The wallets that benefit from future airdrops won't just be the ones that completed the right tasks. They'll be the ones with provable track records of genuine participation.

What You Should Do Now

If your onchain behavior is solid, make sure it's recognized.

zPass is an NFT that represents your zScore—a portable proof of your reputation that protocols can verify. Think of it as your DeFi passport: mint it once, and it follows you across the ecosystem.

When the next wave of reputation-gated airdrops launches, the wallets with a zPass will be eligible. The ones without it will be invisible.

Do you think you’ll survive this change in project behavior? Do you have better ideas on how to evolve airdrops to make the more effective for all parties?

Check your zScore and mint your zPass to find out: app.zpass.ai

The airdrop meta is evolving. The farmers who adapt will thrive. The ones who don't will wonder why they stopped qualifying.

Your move.

About Zeru

Zeru is building the reputation layer for DeFi. zScore is an AI-powered reputation score that analyzes your onchain behavior across chains—no KYC or identity required. zPass is an NFT that makes your score portable, unlocking exclusive deals, better rates, and priority access across ecosystems. Secured by EigenLayer and propagated cross-chain via LayerZero, zScore turns your wallet history into an asset that protocols can trust and reward.

Learn more at zPass.ai.

Until now.

The Problem We're Solving

Think about what happens today when you interact onchain. You might be a reliable liquidity provider who's weathered multiple market crashes. You might have a perfect history of loan repayments. You might be a long-term contributor to DeFi protocols who's never farmed an airdrop.

But onchain? You look identical to a bot.

Your wallet address carries no context. No history. No reputation. Every interaction treats you as if you just appeared yesterday, indistinguishable from Sybil clusters and mercenary capital.

The costs of this are massive. Airdrops leak 80% of their value to farmers. Lending protocols require 150% collateral because they can't distinguish reliable borrowers from risky ones. Over $100 billion in capital sits locked as collateral that wouldn't need to be there if trust was quantifiable. Projects resort to centralized allowlists and KYC just to filter out bots.

The onchain economy is growing exponentially—10x transaction growth from 2024 to 2026, over a billion wallets created, $10 trillion in tokenized assets by 2030—but it's crippled by a credit and credibility crisis.

Zeru is solving this by building the foundational Behavioral Intelligence Infrastructure for all onchain economic activity.

What We're Building

At its core, Zeru converts wallet actions into trust, capital efficiency, incentives, and coordination primitives. We've built a dual-core behavioral intelligence engine that works in two layers.

The Data Core decodes, structures, and labels blockchain transactions to extract behavioral features. We're not just indexing raw data like others do—we're interpreting it. We identify patterns that reveal trust, skill, reliability, and intent.

The Inference Core uses neural networks trained on 3-5x more behavioral features than generic models to infer trust, risk, and sophistication from your onchain actions. This produces zScore—a 0-1000 reputation score that actually means something.

The result? zScore: your universal reputation score. zPass: your portable identity passport. And Zaps: programmable incentive primitives that let protocols reward real behavior, not bot activity.

What This Unlocks for You

If you're a user, here's what changes.

Your reliable behavior finally matters. When you hold liquidity positions through volatility, repay loans consistently, participate in governance thoughtfully, and contribute to protocols over time—you build reputation that unlocks tangible benefits.

Better yields on your stablecoins. Access to undercollateralized loans. Early access to new protocol launches. Reputation-weighted airdrops that actually reward you instead of farmer armies. Trading capital from partners who want to onboard sophisticated users. Allowlist spots for high-value mints.

Your onchain activity becomes cumulative. Instead of starting from zero on every new protocol, your zPass carries your reputation across chains and platforms. You own your behavioral history. No KYC. No identity required. Just verifiable behavior secured by cryptographic proofs.

Over 320 million Ethereum wallets now have a zScore. Your reputation is already being calculated—the question is whether you'll claim it and put it to work.

What This Unlocks for Builders

If you're building a protocol, Zeru gives you the infrastructure to reward real users and filter out noise.

Run reputation-weighted airdrops using our filtration and attribution APIs. Distribute incentives to wallets based on their actual contribution history, not just transaction volume. Integrate custom Zapperboards into your UI to create dynamic, behavior-based reward systems with zero smart contract changes required.

Offer better lending rates to high-reputation borrowers. Create allowlists that actually identify sophisticated users instead of bot clusters. Build loyalty programs where long-term behavior compounds into better access and yields.

The technical infrastructure is already live. We operate as an EigenCloud AVS, which means every zScore is verifiable, auditable, and secured by restaked Ethereum. Our Merkle root gets attested by decentralized operators and propagated across chains via LayerZero, creating a unified reputation state that works everywhere.

Trading firms are already using our primitives to onboard top-zScore users. Protocols like GAIB and Upscale are distributing incentives through our platform. Etherscan integrated zScore so users can see their reputation right where they check their transactions.

This is even more pertinent now given X's decision to terminate its relationship to InfoFi projects.

Where This Is Going

We're moving toward a future where reputation becomes as fundamental to the onchain economy as wallet addresses are today.

Imagine lending protocols that price risk dynamically based on borrower behavior, unlocking undercollateralized credit at scale. DEXs that route your trades through better liquidity because of your proven reliability. DAOs that weight governance by long-term contribution, not just token holdings.

Imagine AI agents operating with spending limits and execution permissions determined by their behavioral track record. Autonomous economies where reputation serves as the safety primitive that prevents systemic abuse.

But the foundation is what matters most: a cross-chain, verifiable, behavior-centric reputation layer that any protocol can plug into. We're not building a walled garden. We're building public infrastructure.

As financial institutions move onchain and the agentic economy takes shape, the need for a trust primitive becomes inevitable. Reputation closes the loop between behavior and incentives. It makes markets more efficient, protocols more sustainable, and ecosystems healthier.

Join Us

The reputation economy isn't coming. It's here.

320M+ Ethereum wallets scored. zScore live on Etherscan, Polygonscan, Arbiscan, Basescan, Snowscan and other explorers. zPass minted on Base. APIs powering airdrops, lending decisions, and incentive distribution.

If you're a user, claim your zPass at app.zpass.ai. Your behavior already has value—now you can use it.

If you're a builder, integrate Zeru's APIs and white-label Zapperboards into your protocol. Give your users a reason to stay, contribute, and build long-term relationships with your platform that doesn’t end after TGE.

The onchain economy needs interpretability. It needs a way to understand participants, not just track transactions. Zeru is building that layer.

Let's build the trust engine for Web3 together.

• Learn more: zpass.ai

• Mint your zPass: app.zpass.ai

• For builders: Check our documentation and case studies

• Get in touch with our business development team.

The cryptocurrency industry distributed over $4 billion through airdrops in 2024 alone. Yet research shows that 88% of airdropped tokens declined in value within months of distribution, with 64% of recipients selling immediately upon receipt. This represents a fundamental inefficiency in how protocols allocate value to their communities.

Our analysis of three major airdrops—Optimism Seasons 4 & 5, EigenLayer Season 2, and Ether.fi Season 3—comprising over 29,000 wallets reveals a consistent pattern: low-reputation wallets exhibit extractive behavior at rates exceeding 70%, while high-reputation wallets demonstrate retention rates approaching 100%.

For the 60+ projects highly anticipated to be launching tokens this year, the data is unequivocal: reputation-weighted distribution using zScore could have saved these protocols an estimated $7.3 million in wasted token value while dramatically improving community alignment and token price stability.

The State of Airdrops in 2024-2025

Airdrops have become the dominant token distribution mechanism in DeFi, serving as both a marketing strategy and a path toward decentralized governance. However, the ecosystem faces an escalating crisis: the rise of sophisticated airdrop farming operations and Sybil attacks has fundamentally altered the economics of token distribution.

The Scale of the Problem

• Sybil attacks capture up to 50% of tokens in some distributions, with bots and fake wallets skewing 85% of campaigns

• Over 60% of recipients sell tokens immediately during the token generation event

• Tokens with high fully diluted valuations (FDV) are up to 70% more likely to crash post-airdrop

• Share of recipients still active after three months often falls below 30%

Understanding Airdrop Farming: A Balanced Perspective

It's important to acknowledge that airdrop farming exists as a rational economic response to one-time reward mechanisms. When protocols signal future token distributions tied to activity metrics, they create powerful incentives for users to optimize their behavior accordingly. This isn't inherently malicious—it's predictable market behavior.

As one researcher noted, "farming with one wallet address is fair and helps decentralize token distribution." The challenge arises with industrial-scale operations using multiple wallets and automated systems to capture disproportionate shares of distributions intended for genuine community members.

From the venture capital perspective, airdrops serve a dual purpose: they bootstrap initial liquidity and community engagement while providing a path to token decentralization that satisfies regulatory considerations. Projects backed by major VCs like Paradigm, a16z, and Coinbase Ventures have used airdrops as a core distribution strategy—Paradigm-backed projects show a 27% airdrop rate, the highest among major funds.

The solution isn't to eliminate farming or punish participants—it's to design systems that align incentives so that genuine engagement is rewarded proportionally to extractive behavior.

Case Study 1: Optimism Seasons 4 & 5

Overview

Optimism, the leading Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, has distributed over 265 million OP tokens across multiple airdrop seasons since 2022. Our analysis focused on Seasons 4 & 5, examining 11,024 wallets that received approximately 6.63 million tokens.

Optimism's first airdrop in 2022 set a precedent for the challenges to come: the OP token plummeted 70% from its listing price shortly after distribution, as roughly 17,000 wallets immediately dumped their tokens. This prompted a governance proposal to exclude "mercenary actors" from future distributions—though it sparked intense debate about the ethics of punishing users for rational economic behavior.

Key Findings

Our zScore analysis revealed a stark concentration of low-quality wallets: 74% of recipients scored between 0-100, with 46% having zero deposits—clear indicators of airdrop farming activity. These low-score wallets showed predictable extractive behavior:

1. Zero-Deposit Correlation: 46% of wallets in the 0-100 range had no deposits, dropping to 0% beyond score 400

2. Account Age Gradient: Accounts under 1 year old decreased from 57% (0-100 range) to 18% (300-400 range)

3. Repeat Behavior: Low-score wallets (0-300) showed 58-60% repeat bad behavior; high-score wallets (600+) showed 0% repeat rate

4. Instant Dump Concentration: 22% of all tokens were dumped within 1 day, 26.6% within 7 days—overwhelmingly from the 0-200 range

Optimism: Distribution Comparison

The 500+ Threshold Effect: A dramatic behavioral shift occurs at score 500+. Bad actions drop from 37-54% to under 2%, holding behavior increases to 75-100%, and CEX exits vanish completely. Wallets above 600 demonstrate 98.5% good behavior with 87-100% retention—these are the protocol champions who drive genuine ecosystem growth.

Case Study 2: EigenLayer Season 2

Overview

EigenLayer pioneered the restaking paradigm on Ethereum, accumulating over $16 billion in deposits within its first year. The protocol's EIGEN token distribution became one of the most anticipated—and ultimately controversial—airdrops in DeFi history.

The controversy centered on several factors: tokens were initially non-transferable, geographic restrictions excluded users from the U.S., Canada, and China despite accepting their deposits, and only 5% of tokens went to early stakers while 55% was reserved for investors and contributors. The immediate aftermath saw $351 million in TVL outflows and a sharp price decline from $4 to $3 within days of transferability.

Key Findings

Our analysis tracked 8,226 wallets over 90 days post-distribution. The correlation between zScore and retention was striking:

• Wallets scoring below 250 exhibited 75-85% dump rates

• Wallets above 500 demonstrated 50-100% retention

• High-score users held tokens 3.4x longer than low-score counterparts

• LP participation increased 180% among filtered recipients

EigenLayer: Distribution Comparison

The 650+ Elite: Scores above 650 showed 70-100% good behavior. These established DeFi users with complex histories—LPs, borrowers, and long-term holders—represent the optimal target for maximum ROI on token distribution.

Case Study 3: Ether.fi Season 3

Overview

Ether.fi emerged as the leader in the liquid restaking sector, with TVL growing from $100 million to over $3 billion in early 2024. The ETHFI token launched via a $210 million airdrop in March 2024, immediately followed by the pattern that has become all too familiar in DeFi.

The token debuted at $4.13 before plummeting 25% within hours as points farmers claimed and immediately sold their allocations. The rapid sell-off demonstrated the extractive dynamic that emerges when distribution mechanisms fail to distinguish between committed users and mercenary capital.

Key Findings

Our 90-day analysis of 10,015 Season 3 wallets revealed perhaps the most concerning concentration pattern:

• 54.8% of all recipients (5,492 wallets) scored below 100—primarily new wallets, test accounts, or minimal engagement users

• Historical bad actors showed 39-59% repeat behavior rates

• Bad actors in the 0-200 range received 715,760 ETHFI tokens worth $1.79 million

• Score 700+ wallets showed 100% retention—perfect ecosystem alignment

Ether.fi: Distribution Comparison

The Pattern Persists: Historical bad actors—wallets that dumped previous airdrops—showed 39-59% repeat behavior in the Ether.fi distribution. This predictability is precisely what makes reputation-based filtering so effective: past behavior reliably predicts future actions.

Cross-Study Analysis: Common Patterns

Across all three case studies, several consistent patterns emerge that inform the design of more effective distribution mechanisms:

Universal Findings

1. The Critical Threshold Effect: In all studies, score 500+ marks a dramatic behavioral inflection point. Below this threshold, dump rates range from 40-85%; above it, retention approaches 80-100%.

2. Zero-Deposit Red Flag: Wallets with no deposits consistently show the highest extractive behavior. This simple metric alone can filter 30-50% of likely bad actors, or at least actors who will not use your protocol post-airdrop.

3. Account Age Correlation: Older, established wallets demonstrate significantly better retention. The correlation coefficient between account age and positive behavior exceeded 0.89 in the Optimism study.

4. Behavioral Persistence: Past airdrop behavior is a powerful predictor of future behavior. Wallets that dumped previous distributions show 39-60% repeat rates; those with good history show near-zero repeat bad behavior.

5. LP Participation Premium: High-score wallets provide 2-3x more liquidity than low-score counterparts, creating compounding positive effects for protocol health.

Statistical Validation

The Optimism study provided rigorous statistical validation of zScore's predictive power:

Evolving the Narrative: From Adversarial to Aligned

The current discourse around airdrop farming often frames the relationship between protocols and users as adversarial—projects try to "catch" farmers while farmers try to evade detection. This framing is counterproductive.

The Farmer's Perspective

Airdrop farming, at its core, represents users responding rationally to the incentives presented to them. As one prominent farmer put it: "Technical expertise is not necessary to recognize a profitable airdrop." Users deposit capital, provide liquidity, and interact with protocols—exactly the behaviors projects want to encourage.

The problem isn't that users optimize for rewards; it's that current systems can't distinguish between:

• Single-wallet users genuinely interested in the protocol

• Multi-wallet operations extracting value through automated systems

• Industrial-scale Sybil attacks using thousands of coordinated wallets

The VC Perspective

Venture capitalists view airdrops through the lens of community building and regulatory compliance. As Matheus Guelfi, co-founder and crypto researcher at Modular Crypto, stated: "Airdrops also serve as a way to decentralize governance and attract users interested in participating in proposals."

However, when 64% of recipients sell immediately and 88% of tokens decline in value, the community-building thesis breaks down. VCs are increasingly concerned about:

• Token price instability undermining long-term project viability

• Wasted capital that could fund protocol development

• Community sentiment damage when distributions feel "unfair"

The Path Forward: Behavior as Infrastructure

The solution isn't to punish participants or create increasingly complex eligibility criteria. It's to build behavior-based infrastructure that allows protocols to reward genuine engagement proportionally.

This shift reframes the relationship:

• From "catch and exclude" to "recognize and reward"

• From adversarial to aligned

• From binary eligibility to graduated allocation

• From one-time snapshots to continuous reputation building

Implementation: A Data-Driven Allocation Strategy

Based on our cross-study analysis, the Zeru team recommends the following tiered allocation approach:

Recommended Score-Based Allocation

Implementation Phases

Pre-Airdrop:

1. Integrate zScore API for wallet scoring

2. Set minimum threshold at 200 (eliminates 89% of low-quality wallets)

3. Design tiered allocation based on zScore ranges

4. Implement time-based vesting for medium-risk tiers

During Distribution:

• Real-time score validation before token release

• Graduated unlock schedules by score tier

• Reserve 10% allocation for future high-score wallets

• Monitor for score manipulation attempts

Post-Airdrop:

• Track behavior by score cohort (30/60/90 days)

• Measure retention, LP participation, protocol usage

• Calculate actual ROI vs. traditional distribution

• Refine thresholds for subsequent campaigns

Conclusion: Building a Healthier Crypto Ecosystem

The data across 29,000+ wallets and three major protocols is unequivocal: reputation-based distribution dramatically outperforms traditional approaches. zScore filtering could have saved these protocols an estimated $7.3 million in combined wasted value while improving retention by 20-112% and reducing Sybil concentration by 29-87%.

But the real opportunity extends beyond individual protocol savings. By implementing reputation infrastructure across the ecosystem, we can:

• Create positive-sum incentives where genuine engagement is rewarded proportionally

• Reduce the arms race between protocols and farmers that wastes resources on both sides

• Improve token price stability by ensuring distributions reach committed community members

• Build sustainable communities rather than mercenary capital flows

The choice is clear: protocols can continue distributing tokens to extractive participants and watching value evaporate, or they can adopt reputation-weighted distribution and build lasting ecosystems. The tools exist. The data is compelling. The path forward is reputation for the 60+ protocols that are expected to launch token generation events in 2026.

Optimize your next campaign

• Get ahead of the curve by minting your zPass

• Explore our research at research.zpass.ai

• Book an exploratory call with our business development team

In this compelling episode, host Derek sits down with Denis, founder of Upscale and StormTrade, to discuss the revolutionary intersection of proprietary trading, DeFi, and Web3 innovation. This conversation offers invaluable insights for anyone interested in crypto trading, decentralized finance, blockchain development, and the future of financial markets.

Watch on YouTube:

Listen on your favourite platform:

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• Amazon

• Podchaser

• Pocket Casts

Key Takeaways:

The Prop Trading Revolution in Crypto

Denis introduces Upscale as an "alpha monetization platform" that fundamentally disrupts traditional trading by decoupling trading skill from capital requirements. Unlike traditional markets where skilled traders without capital are forced into high-risk gambling, Upscale allows traders to prove their abilities through challenges and trade with company capital, keeping up to 80-90% of profits.

From Banking to Blockchain

Denis shares his journey from corporate software architect to Ethereum smart contract developer, offering fascinating insights into the steep learning curve of blockchain development. He emphasizes that the challenge isn't the programming language itself, but mastering the unique design patterns, gas optimization, and financial logic required for DeFi protocols.

StormTrade's Impressive Success

With over $4.6 billion in trading volume and commanding 90% market share on the TON blockchain, StormTrade demonstrates Denis's ability to build successful DeFi protocols. The platform continues active development with plans for options trading, cross-margin accounts, and enhanced execution speed.

Web3 vs Web2: A UX Revolution

The conversation highlights stark differences between legacy financial platforms and crypto-native solutions. Denis shares frustrating experiences with traditional prop trading platforms requiring 2-day onboarding processes, MetaTrader downloads, and manual account creation—contrasting sharply with Web3's seamless wallet-based authentication.

AI's Role in Trading (and Its Limitations)

Rather than promising AI-powered trading bots, Upscale takes a realistic approach: using AI to analyze trading patterns, identify systematic mistakes, and improve risk management. Denis discusses recent experiments showing most AI models fail at consistent trading, emphasizing that AI currently excels at investment analysis over day trading.

The Problem Upscale Solves

A critical insight: many crypto traders use maximum leverage recklessly because small capital amounts make conservative strategies seem pointless. With only $300-500, earning even 20% annually feels insignificant, pushing users toward meme coins and extreme leverage. Upscale's prop model offers a better path.

Exclusive Zeru Partnership

The episode reveals an exciting collaboration: Zeru's zScore holders qualify for massive Upscale discounts:

• 300-500 zScore: 15% discount

• 501-700 zScore: Free $1,000 account

• 700+ zScore: 95% discount on $5,000 account (just $3.55!)

This integration showcases how on-chain reputation can unlock tangible financial benefits across the DeFi ecosystem.

Looking Ahead to 2026

Denis teases exciting developments including:

• Gamification and eSports-style trading tournaments

• New alpha monetization products beyond challenge accounts

• StormTrade protocol upgrades enabling derivatives and options

• AI-powered risk management advisors (launching in weeks)

Why Listen?

This episode is essential for:

• Crypto traders seeking legitimate ways to trade with larger capital

• DeFi developers interested in smart contract design patterns

• Fintech innovators exploring Web3's advantages over legacy systems

• Anyone curious about AI's realistic applications in trading

About Zeru

Zeru has built a verifiable onchain reputation score accessible publicly on Etherscan, computed by a set of state-of-the-art, behavior-centric neural networks backed by crypto-economic security of $2.5B on EigenLayer. This reputation score is called zScore, and it is becoming the basis for protocols to enhance economic activity from high-quality users in exchange for rewards powered by our reputation passport.

We're thrilled to announce that Zeru and Upscale have partnered to launch a zPass-exclusive campaign—a milestone that demonstrates the real-world value of building a strong onchain reputation!

If you've been grinding onchain, playing by the rules, and building your credibility, this partnership rewards you with something tangible: discounted and even free access to funded trading accounts, all thanks to your well-earned trading battle scars!

What is Upscale?

For those unfamiliar with prop trading, here's the concept in simple terms: you trade with someone else's capital, and you keep most of the profits.

Traditionally, breaking into professional trading required significant personal capital or connections to financial institutions. Prop trading flips this model. Instead of risking your own funds, you demonstrate your skills through a challenge, and if you pass, the firm provides the capital. You trade, you profit, you withdraw—keeping up to 90% of what you earn.

Upscale is the world's first Web3 prop trading firm, built specifically for crypto traders. Here's what makes it different from traditional prop firms:

• No KYC required — Start trading right after payment. All you need is a Web3 wallet.

• 200+ trading instruments — Trade crypto futures pairs 24/7 with access to major markets.

• Decentralized price feeds — Powered by Pyth Network oracles for transparent, manipulation-resistant pricing.

• AI-powered analytics — Smart tools to help you identify opportunities and manage risk.

• Fast payouts — Withdraw your profits within 48 hours, paid in USDT to your wallet.

• Flexible account sizes — Start as low as $18 for a $1,000 account, or scale up to $200,000 (and up to $800,000 across multiple accounts).

• Up to 90% profit split — You keep the lion's share of what you earn.

The challenge structure is straightforward: Phase 1 requires a 5% profit target, Phase 2 requires 8%, with reasonable drawdown limits (5% daily, 10% total). Pass both phases and you're funded!

Upscale was built by the team behind Storm Trade, and they've already onboarded 27,000+ active traders. This isn't a theoretical platform—it's battle-tested infrastructure for serious crypto traders.

What is Zeru?

Zeru is building the reputation layer for DeFi; a way to prove you're a trustworthy participant in the onchain economy.

At the core is zScore, an AI-powered reputation score that analyzes your wallet's activity across multiple blockchains and protocols. It looks at factors like account age, transaction history, protocol usage, and historical behavior to generate a score from 0 to 1000.

zPass is an NFT that represents your zScore onchain. Think of it as your reputation passport—a portable proof of your onchain reputation that unlocks benefits across the ecosystem. It's not just a score you look at; it's an asset you own that grants access to:

• Boosted APR deals and exclusive liquidity campaigns

• Priority access to airdrops and token launches

• Better terms from protocols that value quality users over quantity

The system is secured by EigenLayer as an AVS, and the scoring model uses a behavior-centric AI neural network that continuously improves.

The premise is simple: Good reputation should pay. If you've been a genuine participant in DeFi—not a bot farm, not a sybil attacker, not a serial dumper—you deserve to be recognized and rewarded for it.

The Partnership: zPass Holders Get Exclusive Upscale Benefits

So long as you have an onchain trading history, which the zScore model determines based on your zPass, you get $1000-5000 in free capital to trade on Upscale, with near $0 investment, purely based on your reputation as a trader.

You can take up to 5x leverage and go long or short on a pair of your choice on Upscale. That’s effectively free trading capital of $5000 to $25000. Even a 2% price movement means you make 10%, using someone else’s capital, as long as you’re on the right side of the trade. That’s a $100 to $500 win on a single trade, with none of your own capital invested.

 Based on your zScore, you can claim one of three tiers of rewards:

Let's put this in perspective:

• A $1,000 Upscale account normally costs $18. If your zScore is 500-700, you get it free.

• A $5,000 account normally costs $69. At 700+ zScore, you pay just $3.45.

This isn't a random giveaway. Upscale is specifically targeting users with proven onchain reputations because the data shows these users are more likely to trade responsibly, pass challenges, and become long-term platform participants. It's a win-win: quality users get rewarded, and Upscale gets quality traders.

How to Claim Your Reward

If you already have a zPass:

1. Go to app.zpass.ai

2. Connect your wallet

3. Your promo code will be displayed based on your current zScore

4. Head to Upscale and apply your code at checkout

If you don't have a zPass yet:

• Go to app.zpass.ai

• Connect your wallet to check your zScore

• If your zScore is 300 or above, mint your zPass

• Return to the app to claim your Upscale promo code

• Apply it at Upscale

Your promo code is tied to your zScore at the time you access it, so the code you see reflects your current reputation tier.

Why This Matters

This partnership represents something bigger than discounts on a prop trading platform.

For years, DeFi has treated all wallets equally—which sounds fair until you realize that means bots and sybil attackers get the same opportunities as genuine users. The result? Airdrops get farmed and dumped. Liquidity incentives get extracted by mercenaries. Real users get diluted rewards.

zPass exists to change that equation and this Upscale campaign is proof that the model works. When protocols can identify quality users, they can offer them better deals. When users can prove their reputation, they unlock opportunities that anonymous wallets can't access.

This is a zPass-exclusive campaign.

Get Started

Check your zScore and mint your zPass: app.zpass.ai

Start your prop trading journey with Upscale: upscale.trade

Your reputation is an asset. Start using it.

This campaign has no announced end date. Rewards are subject to eligibility requirements and available while the campaign is active.

Upscale brings together capital, AI, and precision execution in one prop trading platform. As an Upscale user you get a funded trading account, the tools to grow, and transparent terms.

Proprietary trading (also known as prop trading) is a model where a trader trades using the company's capital instead of their own money. Instead of investing large sums, the trader is given control over a portion of the funds available, and takes a share of the profits earned.

This model is called profit-sharing – the trader earns money, and the company takes a percentage of their success. All that's required to get started is to pay for access and successfully complete a challenge. This is what Upscale is building and offering to traders; an opportunity to demonstrate their skills, and then trade with Upscale’s funds while keeping the majority of the gains.

Zeru is bringing onchain reputation to the masses, allowing users to check and claim their zScore, minting it in the form of zPass. Zeru is helping Upscale find the best onchain traders based on their onchain activity, zScore, zPass House, and more. Together we’re bringing verifiable onchain reputation into the prop trading ecosystem. It’s a match made in blockchain heaven!

We are working on introducing zScore-based access tiers designed to reward real, proven traders. These tiers will include benefits ranging from discounts to fully funded accounts for high-reputation wallets, with special perks for top-tier traders.

If you’re an active trader on Hyperliquid, GMX, dYdX or perps, your onchain behavior already shapes your reputation. Now you’ll be able to leverage it for access and benefits beyond profits.

Check your zScore ahead of the rollout → app.zpass.ai 

More details coming soon. 🆉

Some sprint through markets. Some sit calmly through storms. Some explore new protocols like open terrain. Some quietly hold the entire ecosystem together.

Until now, these patterns lived only in raw transaction history. With zPass, they become something visible, meaningful and rewarding.

When you mint your zPass, your wallet is matched to one of the Six Houses of the Onchain Economy. Each House reflects a distinct behavioral archetype observed across millions of interactions onchain.

This is not a personality quiz. It is a portrait of how your wallet actually behaves in the real economy of crypto.

Below is the full lore of the Six Houses and what they represent.

Fire: The Ones Who Move Fast

Fire users chase momentum wherever it appears. They enter volatile markets head-first, rotate through opportunities, follow perps and spot markets closely, and never hesitate when risk is high. They are the ones who keep capital flowing in moments when others stand still.

Fire brings intensity, speed and liquidity into the system. Without them, the ecosystem would move slowly and feel dull. If your wallet is constantly active and always hunting the next big moment, you may belong to Fire.

Ice: The Steady Holders

Ice is calm and patient. These wallets stake, restake and accumulate. They do not react impulsively to market swings. They trust in long-term value and let time compound their strategy. Their presence anchors the ecosystem when volatility expands.

Ice users give protocols their stability. They represent long-term conviction, reliability and continuity. If your positions rarely change and your decisions stretch across months or years, you may be Ice.

Ocean: The Source of Liquidity

Ocean users are the enablers of DeFi. They provide liquidity, deepen pools, and create the conditions that allow every trade, every swap and every new market to come alive.
They are consistent, intentional and often unseen, yet everything depends on them.

Ocean is the quiet machinery beneath the surface. Without it, markets would not function. If your wallet is constantly supplying liquidity or bridging capital to where it’s needed most, you likely belong to the Ocean.

Earth: The Builders of Stability

Earth users operate with discipline. They farm yield, lend thoughtfully, manage collateral with care and prioritize sustainable returns. They choose balance over risk and structure over chaos.

Earth is the steady floor under the onchain economy. They help protocols grow steadily and responsibly. If your wallet prefers optimization and risk-managed strategies, Earth may be your House.

Air: The Explorers

Air moves freely and discovers everything first. These users test new chains, experiment with new apps, complete quests, join early drops and participate in protocols long before they become popular. Their curiosity pushes innovation forward.

Air is the energy that turns early-stage experiments into real ecosystems. If your wallet is constantly exploring, switching chains or trying new tools “just to see what happens,” your House is likely Air.

Ether: The Realm of Masters

Ether stands apart from the rest. It is not just another category but a higher plane of reputation.

Only a small percentage of wallets ever reach Ether. These are long-time contributors, OG explorers, early builders and deeply consistent participants whose history shows impact across cycles. Their presence shapes markets, culture and adoption more than anyone else.

Ether represents mastery. If your wallet carries years of meaningful onchain activity and a broad legacy across the space, you might find yourself here.

Your Wallet Already Belongs to a House. Now You Can Claim It.

The Six Houses are more than lore. They are a new way of understanding reputation: not through balance, hype or speculation, but through behavior.

Your zPass turns your onchain history into something readable, portable and meaningful. It shows who you actually are in the onchain economy and unlocks perks aligned with your House.

Whether you are Fire, Ice, Ocean, Earth, Air or Ether, you have a place in this new world.

Mint your zPass today and discover your House:
https://app.zpass.ai

Your reputation is already written.

Now it is yours to claim.

And now, there is finally a way for everyday users to quantify and use that reputation across the entire ecosystem.

zPass Phase 1 Mint goes live on Base on November 27 at 17:00 UTC.

Mint here: app.zpass.ai

What is zPass

A Reputation Passport for Exclusive Onchain Privileges

zPass is the first reputation passport for onchain users. It gives you a verifiable, privacy-protected identity based entirely on your behavior, not your personal information.

With your zPass, you unlock privileges such as stablecoin yield boosts, reputation-powered airdrops, access to partner deals, early access opportunities, reputation-gated mints and allowlists, and rewards for long-term reliable onchain activity.

All of these benefits are powered by your zScore, an AI-generated reputation score built from your real onchain activity. You can get a glimpse of the opportunities available after you check your zScore at https://app.zpass.ai.

How zScore Works

zScore ranges from 0 to 1000 and is generated by advanced, behavior-centric neural networks that analyze your wallet’s activity across lending, liquidity provisioning, trading, staking and restaking, volatility behavior, cross-chain sophistication, and signals of aligned versus extractive activity.

The goal is simple. Reward wallets that behave reliably and contribute to the ecosystem. No identity. No KYC. Only behavior.

Why This Matters for Users Right Now

Most crypto reward systems today are inefficient. Airdrops are drained by Sybil clusters, yields are exploited by short-term farmers, while the best and honest users usually get the least. Incentives leak to the wrong wallets while real contributors are overlooked.

Reputation fixes this. With zPass, your behavior finally becomes the basis for unlocking better rewards. Holding through volatility, supplying liquidity consistently, repaying loans reliably, and participating over time all feed into your score and unlock better access.

You get credit for being a real participant in the ecosystem.

Why We Chose Base for zPass

Base is one of the fastest-growing environments in crypto. It offers high participation, real users, and rapid experimentation. This makes it the perfect starting point for the reputation economy.

The zPass contract and reputation infrastructure are deployed directly on Base, making Base users the first to receive reputation-aware yields, airdrops, ecosystem deals, partner perks, allowlists, and future integrations.

Base becomes the anchor chain for the new reputation standard, and early Base users will benefit most from it.

The Consumer Layer

Your Marketplace for Onchain Privileges

Once you mint your zPass, you gain access to a marketplace of perks powered by your reputation.

At app.zpass.ai you can view your zScore, explore stablecoin yield boosts, access partner deals, claim reputation-powered airdrops, track how your actions change your profile, link additional wallets, and build a long-term reputation identity that follows you across chains.

zPass turns your onchain activity into something cumulative. The more aligned your behavior, the more valuable your privileges become.

Why You Should Mint zPass on November 27

The next cycle will not look like the last one.

Projects across DeFi, restaking, lending, DEXs, and new ecosystems are moving beyond simple “number go up” tracking and are increasingly relying on reputation to identify real users. Your score will matter for stablecoin yields, restaking flows, high-value mints, partner distributions, allowlists, governance, and more.

Minting your zPass now places you at the front of this shift.
Your onchain behavior already has value. zPass makes it usable.

Mint Your zPass on Base on November 27

This is the only chance to mint your zPass this year.

Mint here: app.zpass.ai

Be early. Own your reputation. Unlock your onchain privileges.

zScore introduces a new primitive: a universal, AI-based, verifiable reputation score for wallets, secured through an EigenCloud AVS and propagated across ecosystems via LayerZero. It converts fragmented activity across chains into a coherent, cryptographically verifiable reputation state that can be used by protocols, agents, and applications.

This article presents a balanced, research-style overview of how zScore works, how the AVS architecture ensures neutrality, and how reputation reshapes both protocol design and user experience.

1. The Need for Behavioral Reputation in Web3

Crypto’s data abundance masks a deeper problem: chains provide raw signals but no interpretation. A wallet that behaves responsibly during market stress looks identical—at the data level—to a bot engaging in repetitive interactions.

The absence of reputation has created systemic inefficiencies:

• Airdrops leak 50–80% of value to opportunistic wallets

• Lending markets require 150–200% collateral because all borrowers appear equally risky

• NFT mints are botted, forcing projects to centralize allowlists

• Governance is Sybil-prone, despite the presence of long-term contributors

• AI agents lack safety rails, since nothing distinguishes a reliable agent from a malicious one

zScore addresses these issues by extracting behavioral meaning from onchain actions, producing a reputation score based entirely on public, non-identity data.

2. How zScore Computes Reputation

zScore operates on a simple premise: wallet behavior is economically meaningful.

Its neural network analyzes:

• Transaction patterns and historical behavior

• Lending/repayment reliability

• LP consistency and liquidity provisioning dynamics

• Staking and restaking stability

• Airdrop and governance participation

• Multi-chain sophistication

• Responses to volatility

• Indicators of Sybil, bot, or farm-like activity

The output is a 0–1000 reputation score. But critically, this score doesn’t stand alone. Instead, the system produces a Merkle tree, where:

• Each wallet’s score forms a leaf

• The tree compresses the global reputation set

• The Merkle root becomes the canonical “state commitment”

This structure enables lightweight verification: anyone can present a score + Merkle proof, and a smart contract can confirm that it is part of the global attested state.

3. Decentralized Attestation of Reputation

A reputation system cannot rely on a single party. If Zeru alone published its own Merkle root, the ecosystem would be asked to trust the entity generating the data—a contradiction to Web3 principles.

This is why zScore is built on the top of EigenCloud infrastracture.

What EigenCloud brings to zScore

• Decentralized verification: Operators independently validate the Merkle root

• Economic incentives: Operators stake and restake capital, placing economic weight behind correctness

• Separation of roles: Zeru computes the tree; operators attest to its validity

• Credible neutrality: No single actor can manipulate reputation

How attestation works

1. Zeru publishes the proposed Merkle root

2. Operators run the zScore Attester, recomputing/validating the state

3. Operators reach consensus and sign the commitment

4. The Othentic Aggregator pushes the verified root onchain

This process converts reputation from a subjective assessment into an operator-backed attested fact—a new form of truth in decentralized systems.

4. LayerZero: Unifying Reputation Across All Chains

Reputation loses power if fragmented. In a multi-chain world, a wallet’s behavior on one chain must inform its treatment on all others.

LayerZero enables this by transporting the operator-verified Merkle root to every supported EVM chain.

Why cross-chain propagation matters

• All chains share the same reputation state

• Protocols can rely on consistent truth, regardless of where they run

• AI agents and smart wallets operate with the same constraints everywhere

• Governance, lending, and DeFi systems gain a unified behavioral oracle

The result is a cross-chain reputation layer that sits above individual L1s and L2s, shaping incentives across the entire ecosystem.

5. What a Decentralized Reputation Layer Enables

The implications of zScore extend far beyond scoring.

A. Lending and Capital Markets

Lending markets can finally price risk dynamically rather than assuming all borrowers are equal. High-reputation wallets receive better LTVs and lower rates, while risky wallets face safeguards. This unlocks undercollateralized credit—long considered impossible in Web3.

B. Airdrops and User Acquisition

Projects can target real contributors instead of bot clusters. Reputation-weighted distributions reduce spillage, increase retention, and fundamentally shift airdrops from “marketing expense” to “capital allocation.”

C. Liquidity Layer (LP & DEX Incentives)

DEXs and liquidity protocols can offer structural advantages to reliable LPs and traders:

• reduced fees,

• preferential routing,

• safer pools,

• more efficient incentives.

D. Governance & Community Structure

DAOs can prioritize long-term wallets over extractive ones.
Reputation becomes a mechanism for ensuring deliberation, not just voting power.

E. Restaking & Validator Economy

Delegator reputation introduces a new dimension of safety and predictability to restaking ecosystems.

F. AI Agents

As agents begin executing transactions autonomously, reputation becomes a safety primitive:

• bounding agent permissions,

• setting spending limits,

• ensuring predictable execution,

• preventing systemic abuse

In short: reputation becomes a first-class economic variable.

6. zPass: The Consumer Interface to Reputation

While zScore functions as an infrastructural primitive, zPass transforms it into a user product: a universal reputation passport minted once and recognized everywhere.

What zPass provides

• A persistent representation of one’s onchain reliability

• Better access to fees, rates, mints, allocations, and rewards

• A portable behavioral history

• A visual identity (Houses, Tiers, Status)

• A unified layer of trust across protocols

Users earn benefits by being reliable, not by revealing identity.
zPass turns behavior into a long-term asset, aligning users and protocols in a healthier way.

7. Reputation as the Next Coordination Primitive

The emergence of a decentralized reputation system marks a structural evolution in Web3:

• Phase 1: Transparent transactions

• Phase 2: Programmable finance (DeFi)

• Phase 3: Shared security (restaking → EigenCloud)

• Phase 4: Interpretability — systems that understand participants

Making Onchain Data Accessible

Part of what we’re doing here at Zeru is making all of this data accessible and interpretable by the average person. zScore, as a value between 0 and 1000, along with attributes like wealth, consistency and protocol diversity makes it much easier for users to view and understand what the impact of their onchain behavior leads to.

Another part of making this data accessible is opening up the zScore Agent on Sentient, whose mission is to ensure that Artificial General Intelligence is open-source and not controlled by a single entity. You will soon be able to chat with the zScore model and ask it for the zScore of any wallet, for insights on that wallet’s behavior, analyze protocols, and more. Offering this in a familiar chat interface will open up possibilities never seen before!

Reputation closes the loop between behavior and incentives. It strengthens markets, stabilizes ecosystems, enhances user experience, and provides a safety layer for increasingly autonomous web economies.

zScore and zPass represent the first practical implementation of this vision:
an interpretable, verifiable, universally accessible reputation system built directly into the multi-chain fabric of Web3.

As crypto moves toward an AI-native future, the need for such a layer becomes not merely beneficial, but inevitable.

However, time and time again, we see airdrops are also one of the most wasteful tools.

Across ecosystems, we see the same pattern:

• Bots farm

• Sybil clusters dominate

• Mercenary wallets dump the token instantly

• Real contributors get diluted or ignored

So we asked a simple, fundamental question:

Does onchain reputation predict who will actually behave like a real user?

More specifically, could it have predicted the outcomes of the EIGEN Season 2 airdrop?

To answer that, we analyzed 8,226 wallets, tracking their behavior across 90 days after the drop.

The results are not just clear, they are transformational for the future of airdrops.

The Problem With Airdrops Today

Most airdrops treat all wallets as equal.

But wallets are not equal — their behavior is not equal.

In any large distribution set, you will always find:

• High-value participants

• Occasional users

• Short-term opportunists

• Sybil clusters

• Complete throwaway accounts

While we occasionally see thoughtful airdrop distribution patterns, today, almost all of them get paid the same.

The result is predictable: most of your airdrop budget reaches the wrong users.

What We Analyzed

We scored 8,226 Eigen airdrop claimants using zScore, Zeru’s onchain behavior model (0–1000). Then we tracked:

• Holding vs. dumping

• Liquidity participation

• Wallet maturity

• Onchain contribution

• Time-held after claim

• Evidence of opportunistic farming

And then we correlated all of it with Zeru’s reputation score AI model, zScore.

The Finding: Reputation Predicts Airdrop Behavior

The dataset revealed a consistent pattern:

Low-reputation wallets (0–250 zScore)

• 75–85% immediate dump rate

• Extremely low retention

• High Sybil likelihood

• Infrequent or extractive onchain activity

• Almost zero liquidity contribution

Medium-tier wallets (250–500 zScore)

• Mixed behavior

• Partial dumping

• Some re-engagement

High-reputation wallets (500+ zScore)

• 50–100% retention

• Higher governance participation

• 2–3× more LP engagement

• Fewer signs of opportunistic farming

• Significantly longer holding periods

Reputation didn't just correlate with “holding.” It correlated with quality of participation.

If Eigen Airdrop Used Reputation Filtering

We modeled what would have happened if the distribution weighted by zScore.

Without reputation (status quo):

• ~68% of tokens dumped

• Only ~32% retained after 90 days

With reputation filtering:

• Dumping drops to 18%

• Retention increases to 68%

• ~87% fewer bots/Sybils

• 2.5× more tokens reaching meaningful contributors

• Millions saved in wasted emissions

This is not speculative. This came directly from onchain data across thousands of addresses. You can view more data and insights here.

Why Reputation Matters Now

Crypto has matured beyond the “spray-and-pray” airdrop era.

Budgets are tightening. Protocols are competing for real users. AI agents are about to flood the chain. Restaking and AVSs require trustworthy capital.

Reputation creates the missing filter between:

• Users who show up only for the payout, and

• Users who actually grow the ecosystem.

In a world moving toward agentic systems, verifiable reputation will become the foundation layer for:

• Airdrops

• Incentives

• Governance

• Access

• Liquidity programs

• Credit

• Sybil resistance

This research is proof that scoring wallet behavior is not only possible — it drives massive efficiency gains.

What This Means for Protocols

If you're planning an airdrop, incentives program, or early-user campaign, reputation is no longer optional.

A reputation-weighted framework lets you:

• Reward real contributors

• Cut off wasteful wallets

• Boost user retention

• Improve token distribution quality

• Reduce dilution of genuine supporters

• Maintain healthier market dynamics

Simply put: You get more value for the same budget.

The Bigger Vision: Reputation as a Public Good

This is why we built zPass, a universal reputation passport that allows users to prove their behavior and unlock onchain opportunities without exposing PII.

And this is why zScore exists as an autonomous verifiable system running on EigenCloud: so that reputation becomes transparent, fair, auditable, and decentralized.

Airdrops will change.
Incentives will change.
User identity will change.

This research shows exactly what direction the industry is already moving toward.

See Your Reputation

You can check your own wallet’s reputation — and mint your zPass soon — here:

➞ https://app.zpass.ai

Your onchain actions already tell a story. Now, you can finally own it.

If you’re a founder or builder and want to embed zPass into your protocol, let’s talk.

Episode Overview

In this episode of Exploring the AI Rainforest, we dive deep into Sentient's ambitious vision with Oleg Golev, Technical Product Manager at Sentient. Our conversation reveals how this innovative company is bridging AI and Web3 technologies to create a more equitable and transparent future for artificial intelligence development.

Key Insights from the Conversation

The Problem with Centralized AI

Oleg paints a stark picture of today's AI landscape: "AI could not be contained, controlled, and well, densely concentrated within one entity. AI is so powerful of a technology that that should not be the case." He argues that current closed-source labs are "extremely extractive," offering no customization, transparency, or community ownership of the underlying technology.

The comparison to the early days of operating systems is particularly striking. Just as the world needed Linux as an alternative to proprietary systems like Windows and Mac OS, the AI world desperately needs open-source alternatives that users can customize, self-deploy, and contribute to meaningfully.

Recursive Agents: A Technical Breakthrough

One of Sentient's most significant innovations is ROMA (Recursive Open Meta Agent), a state-of-the-art framework that represents a fundamental shift from the iterative approaches used by companies like OpenAI and Google.

The Problem with Iterative Systems:

• Context rot: As agents process more information through multiple reasoning iterations, performance degrades

• Information gets forgotten or misinterpreted

• False assumptions persist throughout the reasoning chain

The ROMA Solution:

• Dynamic task decomposition into atomic components

• Recursive tree/graph structure instead of simple loops

• Better performance with less context overload

• Potential to amplify smaller language models

As Oleg explains: "We have a proof of concept that it works because our ROMA deep research is state of the art... It beats Gemini 2.5 Pro. It beats ChatGPT-4o. It beats Perplexity."

Grid: The Protocol for Open AI Development

At the heart of Sentient's vision is GRID, a protocol that creates an ecosystem for open-source AI development. Think of it as the infrastructure layer that enables:

• Developers to contribute to AI artifacts and receive fair attribution and rewards

• Companies to build applications using open-source components

• Enterprises to support developers and high-potential projects

• Communities to collaborate on advancing AI research

• Users to access transparent, customizable AI tools

GRID addresses a fundamental challenge in open-source development: sustainability. By bringing an ecosystem together and providing proper incentive structures and ownership distribution, it enables developers to build careers around open-source AI contributions.

Dobby: Pioneering AI Alignment

Sentient's Dobby model represents a breakthrough in AI alignment - the world's first fingerprinted AI model co-owned by over 700,000 people. This isn't just about creating another AI model; it's about proving that:

1. Custom alignment is possible without sacrificing performance or safety

2. Community collaboration can drive AI development through platforms like Dobby Arena

3. Fingerprinting technology enables true ownership verification of AI models

The implications extend far beyond personality customization. As Oleg notes, this technology could enable DAOs to have AI agents that truly understand and represent community values, or allow businesses to create AI that aligns with their specific organizational culture and goals.

The Web3 Connection: Why Blockchain Matters

Sentient's use of blockchain technology isn't about putting AI computation on-chain - it's about creating trustless coordination mechanisms for AI development. The protocol uses smart contracts to:

• Represent AI products and artifacts on-chain

• Track contributions and attribute ownership fairly

• Create sustainable incentive systems for developers

• Enable community governance of AI development

As Oleg puts it: "People cannot be trusted... And so when I look at a player like OpenAI, I think these guys have betrayed their mission." The blockchain infrastructure ensures that no matter what Sentient does, the open-source ecosystem will continue thriving independently.

Looking Forward: The Future of Open AI

Sentient's vision extends beyond just creating alternatives to existing AI products. They're building the infrastructure for an entirely new model of AI development - one where:

• Small teams can compete with tech giants by leveraging community-built components

• Users have true ownership and control over their AI tools

• Innovation happens in the open, benefiting everyone

• AI alignment reflects diverse community values rather than corporate interests

The company's recent acceptance of 4 papers at NeurIPS (a top-tier AI research conference) demonstrates that this open approach can compete with closed labs on pure technical merit.

The Stakes Couldn't Be Higher

We're at a crucial juncture in AI development. The decisions made today about openness, ownership, and control will shape the technology that may define the next century. Sentient represents a bold bet that the open-source model that gave us Linux, the web, and countless other foundational technologies can work for AI too.

As Oleg concludes: "You do not have a player that has any AI applications that are open source that are as powerful as what OpenAI or Google or Perplexity have... Sentient not only deserves to exist in the space, but in fact, it must exist and must claim a gigantic market, which is the open source AI product market." And they are already taking it, one release at a time.

Take Action

Ready to explore the future of open AI? 

🎧 Subscribe to Exploring the AI Rainforest for more deep dives into the intersection of AI, crypto, and emerging technology. Don't miss future episodes as we continue mapping the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

🔗 Learn more about Sentient at sentient.xyz or sentient.foundation to explore their research, try Sentient Chat, and see how you can participate in building community-driven AGI.

💡 Interested in onchain reputation? If you're a crypto user tired of being treated like a bot, check out zPass. Turn your on-chain reputation into real value with early access, higher yields, and better deals across DeFi. Mint once, unlock thousands in savings.

The future of AI will be shaped by the choices we make today. Join the conversation and help build a more open, equitable, and community-driven AI ecosystem.