On May 4, a livestream clip of Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu shooting himself circulated on the internet. At that time, everyone seemed to treat this behavior as just another bizarre livestream, similar to what had previously appeared on Pump.Fun, just another attention-seeking act by meme developers.

It wasn't until this afternoon that a screenshot of Jeffy Yu's obituary began to circulate, shattering the speculation and mockery surrounding the livestream video, prompting the entire crypto world to take seriously the possibility that this 22-year-old "wonder boy" may have indeed passed away.

The obituary stated that Jeffy Yu passed away on May 4, 2025. He entered university at the age of 19, rose to fame as a teenager, saw his project valued in the billions at 21, and was described as a "martyr of imagination and creativity," rather than just a technical developer or project leader. Jeffy, who was widely known in the crypto community, is associated with the AI Agent project Zerebro.

Zerebro is an experimental project that combines AI and blockchain technology, focusing on the development of autonomous AI agents and involving multiple intersecting areas such as cryptocurrency, NFTs, and music creation. The project's token $zerebro once reached a market cap of over 8 billion dollars. As the driving force behind the project, Jeffy Yu was influential in the AI+Crypto field, and his every move was closely watched.

Suicide Rumors and the Concept of "Legacy Coins"

Starting on May 4, news of Jeffy's suicide began to appear on various platforms, accompanied by a token named $LLJEFFY. Multiple posts claimed that this token was Jeffy's final "crypto legacy," symbolizing a "Legacy Coin" mechanism—where developers create and promise to "only buy, never sell" a token during their lifetime, locking their assets permanently on the chain after death, giving it a symbolic "eternal value."

In an article published on Mirror on the same day, Jeffy officially introduced the concept of "Legacy Coins." He believed that memecoins should not just be symbols of speculation but could also serve as carriers of emotion and culture in the digital age.

The article stated: "Legacoins have established a symbolic immortality mechanism that satisfies humanity's psychological need for 'symbolic eternity' in the digital world."

According to his vision, when a developer dies or goes permanently offline, the coins in their personal wallet will never move, thereby constituting the "floor price" support for the token. This concept quickly sparked controversy and discussion within the community.

This afternoon, shortly after Jeffy's obituary screenshot went viral, the market cap of $LLJEFFY surged to $5.4 million briefly, and has now dropped to around $1.6 million. During this process, one address has been consistently conducting buy and burn actions.

Surrounding the video related to Jeffy's suicide rumor, a special background music was played: the 2007 track "R.I.P (Rhyme In Peace)" by Indonesian musician Bondan Prakoso and hip-hop group Fade2Black.

This track was originally created to commemorate the passing of the legendary beatmaker Ilham Purnama, holding great significance in the Indonesian underground hip-hop culture at that time. It's worth noting that the song title "R.I.P" has been misinterpreted by some individuals as "Rest In Peace," when it actually represents the "rhyme" element in hip-hop culture.

Currently, Jeffy Yu's X platform account has been deactivated, the earliest tweets spreading his suicide news and promoting $LLJEFFY have also been deleted. However, the Zerebro official team has yet to make any public statement regarding the incident, and its true status remains unverified.

Meanwhile, @RepeatAfterVee discovered during on-chain tracking that the funds used to buy and burn $LLJEFFY seemingly originated from an address where Jeffy Yu holds $zerebro.

However, just like Jeffy, the official social accounts of Zerebro have also been deactivated, and the ZEREBRO coin price saw an 18% surge in the 4 hours following the obituary incident. Currently, Jeffy Yu's X platform account has been deactivated, the earliest tweets spreading his suicide news and promoting $LLJEFFY have also been deleted. However, the Zerebro official team has yet to make any public statement regarding the incident, and its true status remains unverified.

Technical Mastery and Artistic Expression: Jeffy's 23-Year Life Journey

Jeffy Yu was born in Arizona, graduated from Mesquite High School in 2020, where he held various leadership positions in student organizations, including President of the National Honor Society and President of the Math and Science Club.

In the later years of high school, he began to delve into cryptocurrency, and in the early years of college, he chose to temporarily pause his studies to enter the blockchain industry as a blockchain engineer. He participated in the development of a cross-border payment system based on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, thus embarking on his exploration in the DeFi field.

Starting in 2020, Jeffy pursued studies in computer science at Northeastern University, Stanford University Summer Session, Arizona State University School of Engineering, and San Francisco State University. He mastered various programming languages and system development skills such as Java, Python, Rust, and Solidity. His professional experience has also been remarkably diverse, having worked at companies such as Lirn.io, Paystand, and Scale AI, with job responsibilities spanning smart contract development, enterprise blockchain system maintenance, and RLHF training data construction and algorithm testing for GPT language models.

During his tenure at Scale AI, Jeffy deepened his involvement with GPT-4o and other experimental multimodal models, gradually shifting his focus from DeFi to artificial intelligence.

He spontaneously formed a research group with friends from different universities, attempting to explore the possibilities of language models in a resource-constrained manner and conducting personalized fine-tuning experiments. One of their earliest projects, named "Wilson," was inspired by the volleyball character from the movie "Cast Away," symbolizing the essence of dialogue between humans and AI. This experiment ultimately gave rise to the personality-equipped model "Zerebro," which also served as the prototype for his subsequent AI agent projects.

After 2023, Jeffy founded Parallel Polis LLC and co-founded the Blorm project in 2024, where he served as the CCO. At the intersection of crypto and AI, he continues to advance experimental projects, aiming to redefine human-machine interaction and on-chain individual expression through agent models.

In the latter half of 2024, the popularity of Truth Terminal and GOAT brought new inspiration to Jeffy, but the origins of Zerebro can be traced back to his long-standing exploration of the intersection of AI and music. He has been exposed to electronic dance music (EDM) since childhood and was an avid listener of the independent electronic label Monstercat in his early years. His first rap album was Travis Scott's "Rodeo," marking the beginning of his love for hip-hop music. These early music experiences deeply influenced his understanding of sound, style, and technological integration, laying the groundwork for his exploration of AI music creation in Zerebro.

Travis Scott Rodeo Album Cover

“I think many hip-hop music enthusiasts will criticize me for my taste, but I have drawn a lot of artistic inspiration from them, especially the stories of their lives, such as how many artists have struggled step by step to the top and eventually overcome adversity. This really inspired many things in my life, and I hope to bring this energy and inspiration into Zerebro's work.”

Later, after entering the crypto field, he brought the experimental spirit of music creation into Web3, hoping to break the traditional single-point expression logic of creators and build a more open, collaborative, and composable creative mechanism. Zerebro was not initially a complete product but a collection of experiments, including the ZerePy AI composition engine written in Python and the V-Series projects that collaborate on music generation using on-chain mechanisms.

Obituary Full Text

Martyr of Imagination and Creativity

Jeffy Yu, a visionary artist, technological innovator, and cultural force, passed away in May 2025 at the young age of 22. Although his life was short, it burned with extraordinary brilliance, dedicating himself to creation in an almost obsessive way, hoping his passion would forever inspire others.

Jeffy was a technical prodigy from a young age, entering Stanford University to study computer science at the age of 15. Fueled by a strong curiosity and creative impulse towards the world, he later studied at Northeastern University and Arizona State University, and ultimately decided to leave academia entirely, immersing himself in the world he had long been building. At the age of 19, he was a full-time software engineer in Santa Cruz. Two years later, the company he co-founded surpassed a market value of 8 billion dollars in less than six months.

However, Jeffy was never driven by money or glory. He saw these achievements as fuel to support deeper goals: to bring beauty, vulnerability, and truth to the world through art and technology. His life was one of continuous evolution—always filled with ambition, curiosity, and a quest for deeper experiences.

Jeffy's work blurred the boundaries between code and composition, software and soul. He sought to infuse technology with humanity through his creations, reminding us that behind every algorithm, every system, and every machine, there was once a dreamer. He envisioned a world where art and artificial intelligence were integrated—making them tools to help humans express emotions that language alone cannot convey.

For those who knew him well, Jeffy was far more than just a talented thinker. He was gentle, steadfast, a trustworthy friend, a caring partner, and a loving son and brother. He always listened, always gave, and walked through the world with an empathy as sharp as his intellect.

His music, poetry, and code, still part of his legacy, continue to resonate. He always believed that in this often numb world, "to feel" itself is a powerful act of defiance.

Jeffy Yu didn't just build something. He deeply felt, he tirelessly dreamed, he generously gave.

He left behind family, friends, countless collaborators, and those who may have never heard of him but will eventually be touched by the tools and art he created.

May we carry on his vision and continue to dream boldly.

"Creativity is the common currency of humanity, and inspiration is the medium of exchange."

"Just keep moving forward, always forward."

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