Open LLM from ETH Zurich and EPFL Fuels Crypto Innovation

August 10, 2025
AI, DeFi, Politics

ETH Zurich and EPFL just did something that matters for both AI nerds and crypto builders: they’re releasing a full, open‑weight large language model (Open LLM). That means every weight, the training code, and the data methodology will be public — trained on a carbon‑neutral supercomputer in Switzerland and shared under Apache 2.0. If you care about permissionless innovation, auditability, or using AI inside DeFi stacks, this is a big deal.

(I’ll be honest — when I first played with an open model years ago, I remember thinking, “Why didn’t we have this sooner?” It felt like unlocking a locked workshop. Same vibe here.)

Here are the essentials in plain language:

Fully open: weights, code, and documentation all public. You can audit, fine‑tune, fork, whatever.
Two sizes: a smaller ~8 billion parameter model for light, fast uses and a ~70 billion parameter model for heavier reasoning tasks.
Huge training run: both were trained on roughly 15 trillion tokens, including code and math datasets.
Multilingual: roughly 60% English and 40% non‑English, covering about 1,500 languages — intentionally global.
Green compute: training used Switzerland’s Alps supercomputer (about 10,000 NVIDIA Grace‑Hopper chips) and was run on renewable energy.
Permissive license: Apache 2.0, so commercial and academic reuse is allowed with low legal friction.
Reproducible: they promise to publish data selection steps, preprocessing, and training artifacts so others can reproduce results.

For years a few big vendors held the models behind APIs and NDAs. Open weights flip that. Here’s why it matters:

Auditability: Researchers and auditors can dig into the model to find biases, failure modes, or safety issues. That’s huge if regulators start asking for provenance.
Reproducible science: Universities and smaller labs can reproduce and improve models without begging for access.
Permissionless innovation: Startups won’t be locked into pay‑per‑call APIs. You can fork and build vertical models for finance, healthcare, languages, etc.
Global access: The multilingual focus means communities outside English markets can actually build localized tools.
Real benchmarks: With public weights, third parties can run fair comparisons and open challenge sets.

A quick aside — openness isn’t a magic wand. It hands tools to defenders and attackers alike. So yes, we need safety work alongside this.

Training big models eats power. Running this on a national supercomputer powered by renewables matters:

It lowers carbon footprint and makes ESG reporting more straightforward.
Public infrastructure often has better energy accounting than private cloud claims.
For academics, using pooled supercomputing is more cost‑effective than renting huge cloud fleets.

Two models for different jobs: the 8B one for low‑latency or on‑device setups and the 70B for deeper reasoning. Both got a massive multilingual mix. Including code and math in the corpus makes them more useful for developer tools, technical docs, and automated reasoning.

They’re also publishing the “how” — selection criteria, filtering heuristics, provenance metadata — which is invaluable if you want to vet what went into the model.

Apache 2.0 is permissive. That’s intentional. It means DeFi teams can embed or adapt the model into products, agents, or contract tooling without complex licensing hurdles. For tokenized services or agent-based systems, that’s a low‑friction starting point.

This is where it gets interesting for builders:

Composable AI layer: Treat an LLM (or a distilled submodel) as another DeFi primitive — like an oracle or governance helper. It can summarize proposals, draft contracts, or explain positions to users in simple English.
Narrative oracles: Turn messy off‑chain text (news, filings, social posts) into structured signals that feed risk models or trading strategies.
On‑chain inference ideas: Full on‑chain inference for a 70B model is unrealistic today. But hybrid patterns are viable — run inference off‑chain and publish cryptographic proofs or signed attestations so contracts can trust results.
Verifiable workflows: Imagine a liquidation agent whose decision path and training examples are auditable. That’s stronger compliance and less blind trust in black‑box APIs.

There are real bumps to smooth out:

Cost: You can’t run a 70B model on mainnet — gas and latency kill you.
Storage: Weights are huge; you’ll need off‑chain hosting with on‑chain checksums or decentralized storage (IPFS/Filecoin) to guarantee availability.
Determinism: Blockchains need predictable outputs. So off‑chain inference must be coupled with reliable verification methods.
Security: Open weights make probing easier. You’ll need robust adversarial testing and monitoring.
Tooling gaps: Middleware for attestations, proof generation, and cheap verification is still maturing.

A few practical architectures will likely dominate early integrations:

Off‑chain inference + on‑chain verification: Nodes run the model, sign results, and smart contracts verify signatures or hashes before acting.
Commit & challenge: Publish a committed result on‑chain, allow a dispute window, and penalize dishonest actors with bonds.
ZK proofs: Showing an inference was done correctly without revealing inputs — expensive now, but promising.
TEEs and attested hardware: Trusted enclaves can run models and attest to correct execution.
Distillation: Make small, verifiable microagents from the big model for on‑chain or near‑chain tasks.

Openness helps with traceability (good for things like the EU AI Act). But it also raises governance questions:

Dual‑use risks: Easier misuse is a real concern. Release plans, red teams, and reporting channels help.
Governance: Who decides dataset updates, inclusions, and stewardship? Multi‑stakeholder processes will be needed.
IP and privacy: Public datasets can include problematic examples; detailed methodology helps find and fix those issues.

Right now, top commercial models still beat open models on some English benchmarks. Not surprising. Those vendors had massive private data and engineering. But openness speeds iteration: community fine‑tuning, shared pipelines, and hardware optimizations will narrow that gap fast.

If you’re in crypto or DeFi, don’t sit on the sidelines:

Prototype now: Start with low‑risk, high‑value prototypes — narrative oracles, governance summaries, or localized UX helpers.
Build middleware: There’s a business in secure, developer‑friendly layers that connect models to contracts.
Invest in governance and audits: If models will influence money flows, add explainability, logs, and legal review.
Use the multilingual edge: Localized interfaces are a killer feature for global DAOs.
Partner with academia: Universities will be early contributors and testers.

Short list of near‑term, high‑impact use cases:

DAO governance assistants: draft, summarize, translate proposals.
Narrative risk oracles: turn news and social signals into risk scores.
On‑chain dispute helpers: auto‑summaries and clause extraction with human appeals.
Compliance toolkits: tailored KYC/AML briefs and policy checks.
Tokenized model marketplaces: sell fine‑tuned variants or access rights.

Risks and sensible mitigations:

Misuse: red‑teaming, reporting channels, and responsible release policies.
Unethical commercial behavior: norms, attribution, and reputation systems.
Overreliance: always keep human checks for big financial moves.
Fragmentation: standardize model cards and provenance metadata to keep things cohesive.

This open LLM from ETH Zurich and EPFL isn’t just another model drop. It’s infrastructure: auditable, reproducible, multilingual, and built with carbon‑neutral compute. For Web3, that maps directly onto composability, verifiability, and permissionless innovation. Expect middleware companies, protocol teams, and DAOs to start experimenting fast. The early moves are simple: prototype conservative integrations, build verification layers, and help shape norms for safe, auditable AI in decentralized systems. If you’re building in crypto, now’s a good time to start tinkering.

Why crypto people should care

ETH Zurich and EPFL just did something that matters for both AI nerds and crypto builders: they’re releasing a full, open‑weight large language model (LLM). That means every weight, the training code, and the data methodology will be public — trained on a carbon‑neutral supercomputer in Switzerland and shared under Apache 2.0. If you care about permissionless innovation, auditability, or using AI inside DeFi stacks, this is a big deal.