$ZERO — The ZeroState Development Fund Token

A community-funded development token for privacy-first hardware and AI products

White paper v2 — September 2026 · figures aligned with the $ZERO Launch Guide

1. Executive Summary

ZeroState is an independent studio building a family of privacy-first, local-first hardware and AI products — devices that think for themselves, on your network, without shipping your data to someone else's cloud. Three projects are already in active development:

• Companion — an offline AI companion, built into a comforting device, designed to keep older adults and children company, remember their lives, and encourage real human connection rather than replace it. The software core is built and already running.
• Hearth — a local-first AI nursery hub that watches, listens, and understands an infant's environment, fusing camera, sound, room sensors, and wearable vitals into one calm notification stream — with every frame of video processed and stored inside the home, never the cloud.
• Hoplings — a swarm of small, expressive robot companions that talk to each other in their own beeping language, learn the room they live in, and run entirely on a local hub with no cloud dependency.

These are not three unrelated products — they are three applications of one platform. Every one of them is built around the same core architecture: a local AI hub that runs the heavy perception, memory, and language work inside the home, while small companion devices handle real-time interaction and talk to that hub over the local network. Hearth calls its hub the same thing Hoplings does — a Nest — and Companion's on-device memory and personality engine is built to run on that identical class of hardware. ZeroState isn't building three products from scratch; it's building one local AI hub platform once, and shipping it into three markets: eldercare and kids, nursery monitoring, and robotic companionship.

That shared architecture is also the conviction behind the whole studio: the intelligence that watches over your home, your child, or your parent belongs in your home — not on a vendor's server. Building it is still expensive. Hardware certification, embedded engineering, pilot programs, and independent security audits take real capital and real time, and ZeroState is building the shared hub platform, plus all three products on top of it, as a small, independent team.

$ZERO exists to fund that work, transparently, with the community that believes in it.

$ZERO is a utility token on the Solana blockchain that funds ZeroState's development pipeline, powers access to ZeroState products and services, rewards the people who follow the work closely enough to want early access, and gates contributor-level access to the codebases these products are built on. It is not a security, it does not promise a financial return, and it is launched with the specific goal of being the opposite of a rug: transparent supply, transparent allocation, and a locked liquidity commitment described in full below.

2. Why a Token, and Why Now

Independent hardware studios face a specific funding gap. They're too capital-intensive and too slow-moving for most crypto-native crowdfunding, but too early-stage, too small, and too founder-led for traditional venture capital, which usually wants majority control or a board seat in exchange for a check. Meanwhile, the people most excited about local-first, privacy-respecting hardware — the exact community ZeroState is building for — are already comfortable holding and using tokens.

$ZERO is built for that gap. It lets the community that wants Hearth, Companion, and Hoplings to exist fund their development directly, in a way that scales down to a $20 contribution and up to a serious position, without giving up equity or control of the studio, and without asking anyone to trust a pitch deck instead of a public ledger.

3. What $ZERO Is Used For

3.1 Development Funding

Proceeds from the token's public launch, and a portion of ongoing treasury activity, fund the roadmap stages already published for each ZeroState project — embedded engineering, hardware prototyping, safety certification, and independent security audits. The treasury wallet is public and its spending is reported on a regular cadence (see Section 6).

3.2 Powering Products

$ZERO is designed to become the native way to interact with ZeroState products as they ship: unlocking optional software tiers (like Hearth's remote-access and backup coordination features, or Companion's advanced personality packs), and, over time, discounted or gated access to hardware units and starter bundles.

3.3 Subscriber Airdrops

Anyone who subscribes on the ZeroState website becomes eligible for periodic $ZERO airdrops. This is deliberately structured as a two-way relationship, not a giveaway: subscribers get early visibility into build progress, pilot programs, and product decisions, and the airdrop mechanism gives the community a direct, transparent way to grow alongside the studio rather than just watching from outside.

8% of total supply (80,000,000 $ZERO) is reserved as the subscriber airdrop pool. Because that pool sits inside the vested creator allocation (Section 5), it cannot be distributed until the 6-month cliff has passed, so airdrops run in two stages:

• Launch week — round 1. On launch day the treasury buys a small amount (0.5–1% of supply) on the public bonding curve, after the anti-sniper window and at the same price as everyone else. That publicly visible buy seeds the first airdrop round, so early subscribers are rewarded in week one.
• Month 7 onward — main pool. Once the cliff passes, the 8% pool unlocks daily over the vesting period and is distributed in recurring rounds. Subscribers who sign up before month 7 earn a claim that pays out as tokens unlock.

Every round is distributed through Streamflow claim pages from the public treasury wallet, so each distribution is verifiable on-chain.

3.4 Gated Repository Access

ZeroState's engineering work is being developed in the open where possible. Holding $ZERO above a published threshold grants access to private, contributor-level GitHub repositories — build guides, hardware CAD files, firmware source, and technical specifications ahead of their public release — turning token holders into the first cohort of actual collaborators, not just spectators. Gating is enforced with Guild.xyz, which checks a wallet's $ZERO balance against the published threshold and grants GitHub access automatically; the threshold is set low enough that a normal subscriber can qualify.

3.5 Shared Infrastructure Across Projects

Because Companion, Hearth, and Hoplings all run on the same local AI hub architecture, they can also share the same token module: one mint address, one balance-check standard, one gating logic, built once and reused across the hub platform. A holder's relationship with $ZERO is the same whether they're unlocking a Hearth feature, a Companion personality pack, or early access to Hoplings firmware — because under the hood, they're all talking to the same kind of hub.

4. One Platform, Three Products

The Local AI Hub

At the center of every ZeroState product is the same idea: put a small, capable computer inside the home to do the actual thinking — perception, memory, language — and keep every companion device around it lightweight, cheap, and purely real-time. Nothing conversational, visual, or biometric leaves the house. The hub is variously called "the Nest" (Hearth, Hoplings) or is simply the on-device engine (Companion), but the architecture underneath is the same pattern reused: local inference, a shared memory store, and a companion layer that talks to it over the home network instead of the internet. $ZERO funds that shared hub platform once, which is what makes funding three products at the same time realistic for a small studio.

Companion

A privacy-first AI companion for older adults, with a version in development for children under original, in-house characters. It runs entirely offline: no raw audio, video, or text ever leaves the device. Companion's software core — memory system, personality engine, and voice pipeline — is already built and validated; what remains is field testing with real users and the embedded hardware build.

Hearth

A local AI hub for the nursery that fuses camera, audio, room sensors, and wearable vitals (starting with Owlet integration) into one trustworthy, low-noise notification stream for parents — architected so that video never leaves the home network. Hearth is explicitly positioned as a parental-awareness tool, not a medical device, and its current stage is moving from working prototype into a household pilot.

Hoplings

A trio of palm-sized, expressive cube robots that explore a room, recognize objects and voices, and talk to each other in an audible language called Chirp — all coordinated by a local hub with zero cloud dependency. Hoplings is fully specified down to the bill of materials and is entering its build phase.

All three products share a single design philosophy — local processing, no unnecessary data collection, and hardware that respects the people who live with it — and $ZERO is the funding and access layer that ties them together.

5. Fair Launch Commitment

The single most common failure mode in token launches is a small insider allocation dumped on public buyers the moment liquidity appears. $ZERO is structured specifically to make that hard to do and easy to verify. It launches on Jupiter Studio, a permissionless launchpad on Solana whose rules are enforced on-chain rather than by promise:

• No presale. 75% of supply goes onto Jupiter Studio's public bonding curve, quoted in SOL. Every buyer, including the ZeroState team, buys at the same public price at the same time. There is no discounted early round. An anti-sniper fee (99% at launch, decaying to 0% over a random 15–60 second window) stops bots from front-running the first seconds.
• Published allocation. The remaining 25% is the creator allocation, split as a published commitment: 12% development treasury, 8% subscriber airdrop pool, 5% team. The deployer wallet and the treasury multisig addresses are disclosed before launch, not after.
• Time-locked creator allocation. The full 25% vests on-chain through Studio: a 6-month cliff, then daily unlocks over 12 months. Nothing from it can be sold, spent, or airdropped before month 7. Studio does not sub-divide the allocation, so the 12/8/5 split is enforced after unlock through the treasury multisig (Squads) and scheduled streams (Streamflow), both public.
• Locked liquidity. When the bonding curve graduates to a live pool, Studio locks 50% of the liquidity for one year. The lock transaction is linked from the project's website.
• Fixed supply, no mint authority. Total supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000 $ZERO by the launch platform. There is no mint authority, so supply cannot be increased later by anyone, including ZeroState.
• Trading fee to the roadmap. Studio charges a 1% fee on trades for the life of the token, split 50/50 between Jupiter and the creator. The creator half flows to the development treasury and appears in every treasury report.
• Public treasury reporting. The treasury is a Squads multisig with a public address. The first report is published within two weeks of launch and monthly after that: launch and mint transactions, the vesting schedule with unlock dates, treasury balance, fee revenue, airdrop rounds, and what is being spent on what.

These aren't promises about price. $ZERO's value will be set entirely by the market, and it can go down as easily as up. What these commitments guarantee is process: no hidden allocation, no silent unlock, no ability to inflate supply after the fact.

6. Tokenomics

The mint address, deployer and treasury wallet addresses, graduation target, and the liquidity-lock transaction are added here as each is created. Jupiter Studio's rules are re-verified on launch day and this table is updated if anything has changed.

7. Roadmap

The step-by-step plan for the launch itself — platform, wallets, vesting settings, listings, airdrop pipeline and the credibility track that follows — is set out in the $ZERO Launch Guide.

8. Risks and Disclaimer

This document is a draft white paper describing an intended token launch and is provided for informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, and nothing in this document should be read as a promise or guarantee of financial return. $ZERO is designed as a utility and access token tied to ZeroState's product ecosystem, not as an investment vehicle, and its value is set entirely by the open market.

Cryptocurrency markets are volatile, and tokens — including $ZERO — can lose most or all of their value. Hardware development carries execution risk: timelines can slip, and products described in this white paper (Companion, Hearth, and Hoplings) are at different stages of development, from validated software core to early build phase, none of which are yet shipped consumer products. Regulatory treatment of tokens varies by jurisdiction and may change. Anyone considering acquiring $ZERO should do their own research and consult independent financial and legal advice.

ZeroState is committed to the transparency measures described in Section 5 and will publish wallet addresses, the mint address, the liquidity-lock transaction, and audit results as each becomes available.

This is a working draft (v2). Supply, allocation, vesting, fee and liquidity figures match the $ZERO Launch Guide and Jupiter Studio's rules as documented in September 2026. Ticker availability, launch date, graduation target and wallet addresses are confirmed before launch.