On May 4, a live stream clip of Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu committing suicide circulated online. At that time, it seemed that everyone regarded this act as just another bizarre live stream, similar to those previously seen on Pump.Fun, merely a meme developer's attempt to attract attention.
Until this afternoon, a screenshot of Jeffy Yu's obituary began to spread, breaking the atmosphere of speculation and mockery surrounding the live stream video, prompting the entire crypto world to confront the possibility that this 22-year-old "genius" may indeed have passed away.
The obituary states that Jeffy Yu passed away on May 4, 2025. He entered college at 19, gained fame as a teenager, and saw his project valued at hundreds of millions by the age of 21. He was described as a "martyr of imagination and creativity," rather than just a technical developer or project manager, with his well-known identity in the crypto space being the AI Agent project Zerebro.
Zerebro is an experimental project that combines AI and blockchain technology, focusing on the development of autonomous AI agents, involving multiple intersecting fields such as cryptocurrency, NFTs, and music creation. The project's token, $zerebro, once surpassed a market value of $800 million. As the leader of this project, Jeffy Yu was quite influential in the AI+Crypto field, with every move he made drawing significant attention.
Rumors of Suicide and the Concept of "Legacy Coin"
Starting on May 4, news of Jeffy's suicide began to appear on the X platform, coinciding with the emergence of a token called $LLJEFFY. Multiple posts claimed that this token was Jeffy's last "crypto legacy," symbolizing a mechanism of "Legacy Coin"—tokens created by developers during their lifetime with a promise to "buy only, not sell," which, upon their death, would have their assets locked and forever frozen on the blockchain, endowing them with a symbolic "eternal value."
On the same day, Jeffy published an article on Mirror, formally introducing the concept of "Legacy Coin." 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 establish a symbolic mechanism of immortality, satisfying humanity's psychological need for 'symbolic immortality' in the digital world."
According to his vision, when a developer passes away or goes permanently offline, the coins in their personal wallet will never move, thus forming the "floor price" support for the token. This idea quickly sparked controversy and discussion within the community.
This afternoon, after the spread of Jeffy's obituary screenshot, the market value of $LLJEFFY briefly surged to $5.4 million, before dropping back to around $1.6 million. During this process, one address consistently executed buy and burn actions.
In the videos surrounding the rumors of Jeffy's suicide, a special background music was featured: "R.I.P (Rhyme In Peace)" by Indonesian musician Bondan Prakoso and the hip-hop group Fade2Black, released in 2007.
This track was originally created to commemorate the late rhythm producer Ilham Purnama and holds significant meaning in Indonesia's underground hip-hop culture. Notably, the song title "R.I.P" has been misread by some as "Rest In Peace," while it actually refers to the "rhyme" element in hip-hop culture.
Currently, Jeffy Yu's account on the X platform has been deactivated, and the earliest tweets spreading news of his suicide and promoting $LLJEFFY have been deleted. The official Zerebro team has yet to make any public statement regarding the incident, and the true circumstances remain unverified.
Meanwhile, @RepeatAfterVee discovered during on-chain tracking that the funds used to buy and burn $LLJEFFY seemingly came from an address held by Jeffy Yu that owned $zerebro.
However, the official Zerebro social media account, like Jeffy's, has also been deactivated, and the price of ZEREBRO has risen by 18% in response to the obituary's impact. Currently, Jeffy Yu's account on the X platform has been deactivated, and the earliest tweets spreading news of his suicide and promoting $LLJEFFY have been deleted. The official Zerebro team has yet to make any public statement regarding the incident, and the true circumstances remain unverified.
Technical and Artistic Dual Training: Jeffy's 23 Years of Life
Jeffy Yu was born in Arizona and graduated from Mesquite High School in 2020. He held several leadership positions in various student organizations, including president of the National Honor Society and president of the Math and Science Club.
Towards the end of high school, he began to explore cryptocurrency, and in the early years of college, he chose to temporarily suspend his studies to dive into the blockchain industry, becoming a blockchain engineer and participating in the development of a cross-border payment system based on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, thus starting his exploration in the DeFi field.
From 2020 onwards, Jeffy studied computer science at Northeastern University, Stanford University summer courses, Arizona State University College of Engineering, and San Francisco State University, mastering various programming languages and system development skills, including Java, Python, Rust, and Solidity. His professional experience was also exceptionally rich—he worked at companies like Lirn.io, Paystand, and Scale AI, covering smart contract development, enterprise blockchain system maintenance, and RLHF training data construction and algorithm testing for GPT series language models.
While working at Scale AI, Jeffy delved into GPT-4o and other experimental multimodal models, gradually shifting his focus from DeFi to artificial intelligence.
He and friends from different universities spontaneously formed a research group, attempting to explore the possibilities of language models with limited resources and conducting personalized fine-tuning experiments. One of their earliest projects was named "Wilson," inspired by the volleyball character in the movie "Cast Away," symbolizing the essence of dialogue between humans and AI. This experiment ultimately led to the creation of the personality-defined model "Zerebro," which became the prototype for his subsequent AI agent project.
After 2023, Jeffy founded Parallel Polis LLC and co-founded the Blorm project in 2024, serving as CCO. At the intersection of crypto and AI, he continued to advance experimental projects, attempting to redefine human-computer interaction and on-chain individual expression through agent models.
In the second half of 2024, the explosive success of Truth Terminal and GOAT brought new inspiration to Jeffy, but the origins of Zerebro can be traced back to his long-term exploration of the intersection of AI and music. He was exposed to EDM from a young age and was an avid listener of the independent electronic label Monster Cat; his first rap album was Travis Scott's "Rodeo," which sparked his passion for hip-hop music. These early musical experiences deeply influenced his understanding of the fusion of sound, style, and technology, laying the groundwork for his exploration of AI music creation in Zerebro.
Cover of Travis Scott's Rodeo album
"I think many hip-hop music lovers will critique me based on my taste, but I draw a lot of artistic inspiration from them, especially their life stories, like how many artists struggle step by step to reach the top and eventually overcome difficulties. This really inspires many things in my life, and I hope to bring that energy and inspiration into the creation of Zerebro."
After entering the crypto field, he brought the experimental spirit of music creation into Web3, hoping to break through the traditional single-point expression logic of creators and build a more open, collaborative, and composable creative mechanism. Zerebro was initially not a complete product but a collection of experiments, including the AI composition engine ZerePy written in Python and the V series projects that collaboratively generate music using on-chain mechanisms.
Full Obituary
Martyr of Imagination and Creativity
Jeffy Yu, a visionary artist, technological innovator, and cultural force, passed away in May 2025 at the age of 22. His life, though brief, burned with extraordinary brilliance, as he devoted himself to creation in an almost obsessive manner, hoping that his passion would forever inspire others.
From a young age, Jeffy was a technical prodigy, entering Stanford University to study computer science at just 15. Driven by a strong curiosity about the world and a creative impulse, he attended Northeastern University and Arizona State University, later deciding to completely leave academia to immerse himself in the world he had already begun to build. By the age of 19, he was working as a full-time software engineer in Santa Cruz. Two years later, the company he co-founded saw its market value exceed $800 million in less than six months.
But Jeffy was never driven by money or glory. He viewed these achievements as fuel to support deeper goals: to bring beauty, fragility, and authenticity to the world through art and technology. His life was one of constant evolution—always ambitious, always curious, always pursuing deeper feelings.
Jeffy's creations blurred the lines between code and composition, software and soul. He sought to humanize technology through his work, reminding us that behind every algorithm, every system, and every machine, there is a person who once dared to dream. He envisioned a world where art and artificial intelligence merged—making them tools to help humanity express emotions that language alone cannot carry.
To those who knew him well, Jeffy was far more than a talented thinker. He was gentle, steadfast, a trustworthy friend, a caring partner, and a deeply invested son and brother. He was always listening, always giving, walking through the world with a sense of empathy as sharp as his intellect.
His music, poetry, and code continue to circulate as part of his legacy. He always believed that in this often numb world, "to feel" itself is the most powerful form of resistance.
Jeffy Yu did not just build something. He felt deeply, he dreamed tirelessly, and he gave generously.
He left behind family, friends, countless collaborators, and those who may have never heard of him but will ultimately be touched by the tools and art he created.
May we carry on his vision and continue to dream boldly.
"Creativity is humanity's common currency, and inspiration is the medium of exchange."
"Just move forward, always move forward."
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