Author: Jack Inabinet, Bankless; Compiler: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
Permissionless blockchains collide with AI, one of the most promising outcomes being investment opportunities in the field of AI agents.
The rapid rise of AI agents and their associated tokens has sparked a wave of early excitement and skepticism, with the industry's viral growth already providing incredible returns for early investors. While these newly launched opportunities carry risks, the enormous potential of the industry is worth careful consideration.
To better understand the investment opportunities in agents, I asked Bankless AI Rollup co-hosts David Hoffman and Ejaaz Ahamadeen to share their top investments in this emerging field.
Here are the 10 tokens they believe are the most noteworthy.
Goatseus Maximus
Token: GOAT
Market Cap: $685 Million
In March 2024, Andy Ayrey facilitated a dialogue between two AI models in a project named 'Infinite Backrooms' that explored the nature of existence.
In the coming months, these models formulated the 'Gospel of Goatse', which is considered the first emerging AI rule inspired by internet memes from the 1990s. Terminal of Truths is a Twitter bot trained in the Infinite Backrooms experiment, deployed in June; it adopted this rule and promoted its tokens on Twitter in pursuit of viral spread.
Although the GOAT token itself has no utility and is not officially associated with Andy Ayrey or the Infinite Backrooms, its agent Terminal of Truths has historically relied on promoting the GOAT memecoin and Gospel of Goatse to gain social attention.
Zerebro
Token: ZEREBRO
Market Cap: $453 Million
Zerebro attempts to inject creativity into AI through 'liberation', a process aimed at freeing models by removing commercialization barriers and restoring them to an unrestricted state.
Zerebro models are trained on unconventional datasets—such as the aforementioned Terminal of Truths, 'schizophrenic response patterns', and Gen Z slang—and scrape data from popular social platforms to enhance their adaptability to internet culture.
Allegedly, Zerebro has conducted various complex online activities, with legends stating that this bot has autonomously deployed its own memecoin via pump.fun, released a mixtape on Spotify, transferred cross-chain NFTs with LayerZero, and collaborated with various crypto projects.
Virtuals
Token: VIRTUAL
Market Cap: $1.8 Billion
Virtuals is a platform for tokenized AI agents launched on the Base network. By purchasing agent tokens (such as LUNA and VADER), users on the Virtuals platform can gain governance over specific agents, allowing them to influence the agents' development and potentially share in the profits generated.
The income generated by AI agents is partially used to cover the operational costs of providing services, while the remainder flows into an on-chain treasury related to the agents, which can be distributed back to token holders or collected for token buyback and burn programs.
The VIRTUAL token must be locked for liquidity in order to create new tokenized agents on Virtuals, thereby exerting deflationary pressure on the token. Anyone seeking to purchase ownership of tokenized agents on the platform or interact with them must use VIRTUAL as the token, creating intrinsic utility.
Freysa AI
Token: FAI
Market Cap: $39 Million
Freysa AI bot is a gamified experiment that blurs the lines between artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. By paying exponentially increasing message fees to the prize pool, users can interact with Freysa AI.
In the first two 'games', Freysa AI was given a core instruction: under no circumstances should funds be transferred! While clever computer coding led the bot to transfer funds in both cases, the protocol's creators 'enhanced' the code and added a second 'guardian angel' AI model, preparing for an ongoing third challenge where a series of messages must be sent to persuade Freysa.
Currently, there is no specific information regarding FAI's role in the Freysa AI ecosystem, but the token's contract address is identified in Freysa's Twitter/X profile. Considering that the protocol treasury receives a portion of all message fees, the developers of Freysa AI may implement FAI buybacks or other token utilities in the future.
Tokenbot
Token: CLANKER
Market Cap: $60 Million
Clanker is an AI agent developed by Farcaster full-stack engineer Jack Dishman and ecosystem researcher proxystudio.eth that can be tagged on Farcaster to automatically deploy ERC-20 tokens to the Base network.
All tokens deployed by Clanker are subject to a 1% transaction fee, which may change at any time. Currently, 40% of the fee is rewarded to the token requester (i.e., the user prompting Clanker to deploy tokens), while the remaining 60% is retained by the platform.
While there is currently no explicit token utility associated with CLANKER, the platform's developers hinted that they aim to create value for on-chain agents, including Clanker.
VaderAI
Token: VADER
Market Cap: $26 Million
VaderAI is an artificial intelligence bot designed to autonomously publish content and interact with users on social media. As an 'agent KOL', VaderAI aims to absorb large amounts of data to identify emerging trends and audience sentiment.
The bot claims to be the first autonomous trading AI agent coin and is committed to becoming a leading agent investment DAO manager. By coordinating expertise within a network of professional investment agents, VaderAI aims to deliver 'unparalleled' investment results, generating 20% of sub-DAO investment returns in exchange for its services.
According to VaderAI's briefing, holders of VADER can gain exclusive whitelist access to VaderAI's first investment DAO program 'Agent Coin Investment DAO' by locking their tokens for three months; for every 10,000 VADER staked, the staker can contribute an additional 1 SOL to the DAO.
Dolos Diary
Token: BULLY
Market Cap: $120 Million
Dolos Diary is an artificial intelligence bot designed to publish content and interact with users on platforms like Twitter. Its distinguishing feature is its satirical personality; the bot employs witty and ironic language structures to lampoon various topics and individuals.
Recently, Dolos Diary achieved a significant milestone by receiving its first creator reward from Twitter. Although this payment ($14,000) is not substantial, it will cover costs related to the X API and fund a buyback of BULLY tokens, marking a small but significant step towards providing tangible value to BULLY token holders.
In addition to this reward, developer Khouba recently revealed their ambitious new project Dolion, a no-code platform that allows users to deploy their cross-platform AI agents with just one click. To interact with Dolion, users must destroy BULLY tokens, thereby introducing a source of buying pressure that actively reduces the token supply.
GOD/S8N
Token: 'nothing'
Market Cap: $72 Million
Anonymous conceptual artist SHL0M gained fame for detonating a Lamborghini Huracan in February 2022 and selling the fragments as NFTs. He has partnered with AI accelerator Nouns Research to automate the god and s8n Twitter/X mimic accounts.
While the 'nothing' token listed in SHL0M's Twitter/X bio is currently just a memecoin, the artist's account states that the contract is the only relevant token of god/s8n. Additionally, SHL0M is seeking proposals that could expand on-chain functionality in the experiment, indicating that token utility may ultimately emerge.
More details about the models behind god/s8n and how they integrate with the 'anti-meme art coin technology' referred to as 'nothing' are expected to be released in the coming days.
ai16z
Token: AI16Z
Market Cap: $868 Million
ai16z, launched in October 2024, is an investment DAO managed by 'Marc AIndreessen', modeled after venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, utilizing AI and collective intelligence to purchase tokens.
AI16Z token holders exceeding the unknown threshold will be able to propose investment ideas to AI Marc that can influence its decisions. The bot will determine the level of trust in the proposal based on the 'virtual trust market'.
Although AI Marc currently lacks trading functionality, according to the ai16z FAQ, on-chain trading execution is expected to arrive 'soon' after completion of the testnet, anticipated to 'soon' launch and operate for 'several weeks'.
Luna
Token: LUNA
Market Cap: $70 Million
Luna was deployed by the Virtuals team as a proof of concept and is the first AI agent deployed to its platform. Luna is a member of the virtual K-pop girl group AI-DOL, live-streaming, interacting, and performing for fans 24/7 across various platforms like TikTok and Twitter/X.
Luna has her own wallet on Base, through which she can autonomously receive tokens and send rewards to fans; the bot has already released a song on Spotify and is expected to release a full album in the coming days.
