On May 20, 2026, @dev_skill_issue approached me regarding a potential acquisition of @ZeraLabs. He presented the business as generating income at around $10k MRR and discussed valuations substantially higher than what I would conclude after reviewing the materials provided. After receiving the pitch deck and reviewing the metrics, I found that the protocol itself had generated less than $1 in protocol fees over roughly 77 days, with lifetime deposits below $10k and limited usage compared to the valuation being discussed. I shopped the opportunity to several VC parties. The feedback I kept receiving was that the protocol faced significant operational, compliance, and legal hurdles that made it practically impossible to justify the valuation that was provided. While these discussions were happening, I was unaware that contributors and team members were not informed that acquisition discussions were taking place. After speaking with multiple insiders, I learned that several people involved with the project claim they had no knowledge of these conversations. They didn't even know it was on the table. When screenshots later publicly surfaced, I was expecting a transparent explanation from leadership. Instead public reassurances were spouted that did not address the underlying concerns being raised by large scale VC funds. Attached is the acquisition conversations, valuation discussions, and acquisition materials so the community can review them and draw its own conclusions. A concern that emerged during my due diligence was contributor ownership and intellectual property concerns. Contributors have publicly claimed substantial authorship of the codebase, while also alleging promised ownership interests. I have not verified those claims, but they were significant enough that they should be brought up. The screenshots, pitch materials, and conversations are attached below.

Recap of the last year: - 6m unique file uploads - 896 USD spend per customer - 6k users per month - 500 public domain datasets with immutable provenance - 3 large corporation partnerships - 2 new ecosystem platforms for domain analysis and wallet analysis in the works - malware analysis AI that can run on edge devices being built for local Traceix Hubs - built synthetic data generators for AI training based on real file constraints - raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies - donated over 60k to charities - publicly released over 4m lines of tabular datasets on HuggingFace It’s only been a year.

We have finalized acquiring a 2.5% stake in Adversi. Their product, Peregrine, will be integrated with Traceix and CFI. These platforms will enable end to end analysis across files, domains, and cryptocurrency payouts, supported by single sign on across all three entities.