Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
Never would have thought that a sequel to the 'case sensitivity battle' like neiro and NEIRO could unfold.
Odaily Note: For the prequel story, please refer to (Neiro and NEIRO listed on Binance, is the Meme coin track reaching a turning point?)
Today, the controversy surrounding eliza and ELIZA has become the most discussed topic in the market, even affecting the popular AI concept meme token ai16z, which saw a sharp short-term drop — GMGN data shows that ai16z fell as low as $0.181, and as of around 17:30, it is reported at $0.269, with a 24-hour drop of 35.9%.
Odaily Planet Daily summarizes the story's origins and developments as follows.
Regardless of the case sensitivity, the so-called Eliza (or eliza or ELIZA, denoted with a $ symbol for differentiation in the following text) originally refers to an AI Agent supported by ai16z. The virtual image corresponding to Eliza is shown in the figure below, depicting a black-haired girl in orange clothing themed around ai16z.
Initially, Eliza did not have any tokens, but as ai16z continued to gain popularity, the image of Eliza itself also possessed certain meme attributes.
Lowercase $eliza takes the lead
At around 4:00 AM Beijing time on November 17 (based on GMGN opening data), the AI Agent token launch platform vvaifu.fun automatically generated the lowercase token $eliza, to which the team explained, 'Shaw (founder of ai16z) claimed he never intended to create the Eliza token, so we took the initiative to do this for the community.'
From the dynamics reposted by the official $eliza team, Shaw did indeed make similar statements on November 10 and expressed welcoming the community to launch tokens — although Shaw's original words were welcoming the community to launch Eliza the agent, from the following text referring to CTO (Community Take Over), it seems that Shaw was referring to welcoming the community to launch tokens.
According to community feedback, to reward ai16z's contributions, $eliza once airdropped 7% of its supply to ai16z as a thank you.
$eliza was enthusiastically embraced by the community as soon as it was launched, skyrocketing to $0.0566 at its peak, corresponding to a market value of about $56 million.
Uppercase $ELIZA stirs the pot
Everything seemed normal at first, but on the afternoon of November 19, the situation suddenly changed.
On November 19 at around 2:00, the uppercase version $ELIZA suddenly emerged, quickly surpassing a $20 million market capitalization within 10 minutes; by 2:30, Shaw directly posted the $ELIZA contract on X, clearly stating that $ELIZA was the token that ai16z participated in issuing — by this time, the market capitalization of $ELIZA had already exceeded $50 million.
Upon Shaw's statement, $eliza immediately plummeted, quickly dropping from around $0.026 to a low of $0.007 within 5 minutes, with a maximum drop exceeding 70%.
In contrast, $ELIZA has surged, peaking above $0.1, with a corresponding market value exceeding $100 million.
Although Shaw mentioned he would airdrop 10% of the $ELIZA supply to $eliza holders, the holders of $eliza clearly did not buy it, as the community questioned Shaw's behavior of pushing the new coin as flip-flopping (he previously stated he would not issue a coin), harming the real interests of those who had invested in $eliza.
More importantly, due to the rapid rise of $ELIZA in early stages (which exploded before Shaw spoke out), it left little profit space for the community, exacerbating their anger, and many users even began to accuse Shaw of conspiracy to control the market.
In addition, the community also uncovered that another partner of ai16z, Logan, was selling $eliza and buying $ELIZA throughout the day, which further exacerbated the decline of $eliza.
Is it 'lowercase frontrun' or 'uppercase takeover'?
In the dynamic supporting $ELIZA, Shaw mentioned that 'for the past two weeks, we have been planning this token release with the partner team', implying that the launch of $ELIZA was not a sudden decision after seeing the success of $eliza, but rather an explanation of his flip-flopping behavior, emphasizing that the launch of $ELIZA was executed by another partner team.
As community doubts fermented, Shaw subsequently held two spaces and issued a lengthy response. In his response, Shaw mentioned that he had been preparing to launch the token with the aforementioned partner team for two weeks, originally planning to release it last Friday, but it was unexpectedly moved to this Monday. He did not anticipate the sudden appearance of a $eliza issued by an unfamiliar team over the weekend... Shaw even directly referred to the emergence of $eliza as 'frontrunning' and expressed feeling very sad that his long-prepared project was taken away.
However, on the other hand, the $eliza team believes that Shaw's actions are 'taking food from the bowl'. The team has repeatedly responded on X, stating that Shaw's actions are merely an attempt to steal the achievements of $eliza and claim everything for himself; the airdrop of 10% of tokens to $eliza holders was simply because Shaw did not want to appear too awkward...
Community disputes continue, beware of a three-way loss situation
The conflict surrounding $eliza and $ELIZA has led to ongoing disputes within the community.
The current result is that $eliza has already been cut in half again, and ai16z has also been significantly affected by this incident, dropping sharply. Although $ELIZA still temporarily maintains its upward trend, both the token and Shaw's reputation have suffered a severe blow.
Currently, holders of $eliza hope to steer the narrative towards 'the community power battling a conspiracy group', replicating the story of neiro's counterattack against NEIRO. However, as a second rendition of a similar plot, the community is bound to experience some aesthetic fatigue; while $eliza has gradually stabilized at a low level, the rebound trend is not yet obvious, and investors still need to be cautious of the risk of weakening narratives, DYOR.