Seeing the tweets about ZERO being criticized, hahaha, when I first looked at this project, I also critiqued it:

Another DeAI scammer!

After all, in the past two years, we have seen many AI + Crypto projects.

The white paper is written like a Nobel Prize application, the product looks like a college student's final project;

The roadmap is drawn like an interstellar immigration plan, but in the end, it lands as a ChatGPT shell webpage.

So when I first saw ZERO / c0mpute, my first reaction was very simple:

“Brother, you better really have something.”

I only started to seriously study this project after seeing Shard.

The article below by @KSimback about decentralized inference clarified many of my previous studies and brought ZERO back to a more discussion-worthy position:

It might not be just an ordinary AI meme,

but rather an attempt to do decentralized inference.

That is: decentralized AI inference.

This sounds grand, but translated into plain language:

Now AI inference increasingly resembles a high-end restaurant operated by a few big companies.

The menu is written by OpenAI, the kitchen is run by cloud vendors, the prices are set by them, and you can’t even ask the chef what’s in the pot when you go in.

Decentralized inference aims to solve whether we can tear down this kitchen.

Let GPUs from different places work together,

allowing large models not to have to be locked in the data centers of a few giants,

transforming AI inference from a “central kitchen” into “a potluck hot pot across the internet.”

This is the story that ZERO's Shard wants to tell.

It doesn’t simply say, “I have AI.”

There are too many projects in crypto claiming to have AI, to the extent that if you throw a brick on the chain, you can hit three AI agents and two decentralized GPU networks.

The truly interesting point about ZERO is:

It attempts to break down large models, allowing multiple GPUs distributed in different locations to run inference together.

What does that sound like?

Like your home computer is not powerful enough, so you call six friends to open their computers, and everyone runs a super-large model together.

But in reality, this isn’t as simple as carpooling in a WeChat group.

Because once the model is broken down, it will face a bunch of problems:

How to handle latency?

How to synchronize between different machines?

Which segment is each GPU responsible for?

How to transmit intermediary data?

How to verify the inference results?

If the network lags, does the entire model die on the spot?

So this is not an ordinary webpage shell, nor is it “ChatGPT API + a token.”

This is also why KSimback's article is worth reading.

The author is not the project party coming out to shout “We are changing the world,” but instead stands within the framework of decentralized inference and compares ZERO / c0mpute.

And he’s not mindlessly promoting.

He acknowledges that c0mpute's Shard demo has technical content while also clearly stating the risks:

The project is still in its early stages.

The code and system still need further validation.

$ZERO is still a small-cap asset from http://pump.fun.

Liquidity is weak.

How the token captures protocol value has not been completely proven.

Privacy and validation issues cannot be automatically resolved with just the phrase “decentralization.”

This makes me think this article is even more valuable.

Because truly useful research is not “Brothers, charge, hundred times the start.”

After reading too many of those kinds of articles, it feels like listening to someone sell ancestral miraculous medicine at a night market, claiming to cure all ailments, with the only side effect being wallet depletion.

What is truly worth reading is that it can simultaneously tell you:

Why this thing is imaginative;

Where this thing is currently stuck;

If it succeeds, what it will change;

If it fails, where it is likely to die.

KSimback's article follows this logic.

As for the author's background.

He is not an ordinary hype person. His public identity is COO of Delphi Labs, and he has long been writing about AI Agents, inference costs, Crypto AI, Proof of Useful Work, and Hermes Agent ecosystems.

This means he is not focused on which coin will pump today or which will crash tomorrow, but rather on where AI and crypto can genuinely combine.

So when someone like this starts to include c0mpute / ZERO in the discussion of decentralized inference, the market will naturally be sensitive.

Because this is equivalent to giving ZERO a new narrative shelf.

Previously it may have been placed in:

The “AI meme zone.”

Now someone has started to put it in:

“Decentralized inference infrastructure candidate project.”

With a change of shelf, the valuation imagination becomes different.

Of course, this does not mean ZERO has already won.

The most objective judgment now should be:

ZERO is not an ordinary air AI coin.

The Shard demo at least indicates that the team has real technical execution capabilities.

But it is still far from being a mature protocol.

There is still a long way from demo to a commercially viable network.

In plain language:

ZERO is now like a team building a rocket in an underground garage.

You cannot say it can already go to the moon.

But if you take a close look, you find that it’s not just a cardboard rocket model; it actually has engines, blueprints, and test records.

This already distinguishes it from most “AI + crypto = changing the world” PPT projects.

So the focus of my reading of this article is not "the author says ZERO is good, so ZERO will definitely rise."

But rather:

ZERO has finally been placed into a more professional discussion framework.

If in the future the direction of decentralized inference continues to heat up, the core focal points of ZERO will become three questions:

Can Shard move from demo to stable and usable?

Can this network attract real GPUs and real demands?

Can $ZERO truly capture protocol value, rather than just being an emotional chip?

If any one of these three questions shows continuous improvement, the market will continue to offer it imagination.

If none of the three can be clarified, then even the best narratives will ultimately turn into “the Emperor's new clothes of AI.”

Personally, I currently position ZERO as:

It is not a proven king,

But it is one of the few technical variables in the current Crypto AI worth continuing to track.

The crypto world fears projects that only tell stories.

But it also loves those stories that unexpectedly produce a working demo.

ZERO is currently most attractive here:

It is not saying, “In the future, we will have a kitchen.”

It has already started serving several dishes.

As for whether this meal will end up being Michelin-starred or a roadside stall going wrong, we still need to keep an eye on the kitchen.

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