smiledao/zkml

The 'smiledao/zkml' project is a historical prototype that appeared during the early hype cycle of Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (ZKML). With only 1 star and 1 fork over nearly three years, the project shows zero market traction and no active maintenance (velocity is 0.0/hr). Its defensibility is near zero because the specific task it solves—on-chain facial expression detection—is now more efficiently handled by general-purpose ZKML frameworks like EZKL or Modulus Labs, which offer significantly better performance, tooling, and security audits. From a competitive standpoint, this project is effectively a 'dead' reference implementation. While frontier labs (OpenAI/Google) are unlikely to compete in the decentralized ZKML space directly, specialized infrastructure players have already consolidated the market, making niche, unmaintained repositories like this one obsolete. Any modern developer would use a tool like RISC Zero or Giza rather than forking this codebase.