1. your rewards now compound themselves
staking $ZERO pays you USDC every day. until today you had two options: claim it, or let it sit. now there is a third: flip on auto-compound and your daily reward is used to buy $ZERO on the open market and stake it straight back into your vault.
the mechanics matter. the bought $ZERO is deposited into the same self-custody vault as the rest of your stake, so only you can ever withdraw it. the network can add to your stake, it can never take from it. new stake ages the normal 24 hours, then it starts earning too. that is the whole loop: stake earns USDC, USDC becomes stake, stake earns more USDC. nothing to claim, nothing to sign, every single day.
it is off by default. turn it on once at c0mpute.ai/staking and forget about it. and if a swap ever fails, that day's reward simply arrives as normal USDC instead, so nothing gets lost.
2. ask the chat for a picture
c0mpute-max can now generate images mid-conversation. ask it to draw something and it writes the visual prompt itself, renders on a contributor GPU, and the picture lands inline in the chat about thirty seconds later.
it is the same uncensored model behind c0mpute.ai/create, so the chat can make what the mainstream chatbots refuse. 20 credits per image, drawn from your staker allowance first if you have one. and as always on c0mpute, nothing is stored: the image goes from the GPU to your screen and nowhere else.
3. image generation in the api
the same renderer is now in the public api. POST /api/v1/images/generations, openai-compatible, so if your agent or app already uses the openai sdk you point base_url at c0mpute.ai/api/v1 and client.images.generate just works.
flat 20 credits per image, known before you send it. the image comes back as base64 in the response, never a url, because we keep nothing on our side. full reference at docs.c0mpute.ai.
why these three together
they are the same idea from three angles: the network should run itself. your stake grows without you touching it, the chat handles images without you switching tools, and agents get pictures from the same api they already talk to. people share their GPUs, users get private and uncensored AI, and $ZERO ties the loop together.
try the chat →
more: staking · api reference · image generation launch
$ZERO · powered by people, not data centers.