Original title: (A tweet raised 35,000 SOL; what is the AI-Pool pre-sale by ai16zdao members?)

Original source: Deep Tides TechFlow

Trends are cyclical; this also applies to crypto. After getting tired of PumpFun's PvP, the market has turned back to the old method of early this year—raising funds through pre-sales, but this time with a new narrative of AI.

Early this morning, Twitter user Skely (@123skely) tweeted to announce the pre-sale of the AI token project AI-Pool (@aipool_tee). Perhaps being a member of @ai16zdao gave Skely some credibility; within less than two hours of the pre-sale opening, more than 10,000 SOL was raised, and after half a day, over 35,000 SOL was raised.

The method of raising funds through pre-sales was popular at the beginning of the year, with many projects raising tens of thousands of SOL, but few achieved good results in the end. Logically, the market has already demystified this method; what is different about this pre-sale?

AI-managed pre-sale type Pump.fun?

In simple terms, this pre-sale project, AI-Pool, is a 'money-raising Fi' managed by an AI agent.

Skely mentioned in a tweet that the early pre-sale money-raising model (like slerf, bome, etc.) would be great if it could successfully launch after raising a large amount of funds. However, this model of transferring money to personal wallets poses a significant test of human nature. Even if the DEV did not initially intend to do harm, the temptation of increasing amounts of money is too great; GM.AI serves as a cautionary tale.

The current PumpFun model does indeed avoid some possibilities of centralized malfeasance. However, it is now filled with bots at every stage, creating chaos: fake comments, opening market sniping, trend following... Even if the mechanism allows for fair launches, the real opportunities for retail investors to participate in trading fairly are dwindling. They not only have to compete with humans but also with bots that are online 24/7.

In short, these methods of participation are certainly not fair for retail investors. Since humans cannot outpace bots, and individuals often break promises under the pre-sale model, it might be better to let AI manage the pre-sale process.

How does AI-Pool operate?

This is a smart token issuance system built on a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Its core is an AI agent running in the TEE, ensuring that its operating environment is protected from hacking or tampering through special security mechanisms. The system employs a carefully designed private key management scheme, ensuring that private keys are never exposed to humans, fundamentally safeguarding the system's security.

In daily operations, the system accepts two forms of capital injection: small donations (less than 1 SOL) and larger investments (1 SOL or more). These funds will flow into the smart wallet managed by the AI agent. The AI agent will use these funds to launch new token projects on the Meteora liquidity pool and reward qualified investors through airdrops.

Throughout the process, each wallet operation generates remote authentication credentials. These credentials are not only used to verify the legality of operations but also ensure that the wallet's derivation process and access permissions are traceable and secure.

Skely also emphasized that this series of developments was completed using the ELIZA framework by ai16z.

The core mechanism of the project is as follows:

1. Fund reception: Users can directly send SOL to the AI agent's wallet address (opRyDjuRetWnsP78FNFTPEnAJX7AkjuD6GTP7tsqHXd), with a minimum of 1 SOL and a maximum of 10 SOL:

· Amounts below the minimum will be considered donations

2. Security assurance: through @PhalaNetwork's TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology:

· Private keys are generated and stored in the TEE

· Developers cannot access private keys

· All operations can be verified in the terminal log

3. Liquidity management:

· AI will create liquidity pools through Metoria (instead of PumpFun)

· The transaction fees flow directly back to the AI wallet

· Qualified participants will receive token distribution

At the same time, Skely also mentioned in a tweet that this pre-sale is not completely risk-free:

Currently, the project is still in version V1, with 10% of the supply being sent to a custodial wallet (publicly visible). These funds will be used for potential future exchange listings or other integrations (cross-chain LP pools, etc.) or for burning. Technically, developers can push code changes to alter rules, but this requires approximately a 24-hour execution period. Of course, once the token is launched and locked, it cannot be changed.

It was also mentioned that in V2 and future versions, the team hopes to allow the AI agent in the project to operate completely autonomously, possibly in a DAO format, so that everyone can benefit from the fees flowing to the AI agent's wallet. They also plan to introduce some whitelist technology and blacklist individuals who attempt to attack or manipulate the system.

The market is FOMO-ing money in, but the details of the issuance mechanism are criticized for being unclear.

From the speed of money inflow in the market, this pre-sale has indeed been successful. The pre-sale address received over 35,000 SOL in just half a day, worth nearly 7 million USD. Although it was stipulated that the pre-sale limit for each address was 10 SOL, some individuals still sent over 500 SOL in one transaction to the pre-sale address.

Pre-sale address:

opRyDjuRetWnsP78FNFTPEnAJX7AkjuD6GTP7tsqHXd

Skely himself did not expect this pre-sale to create such FOMO. He halted the pre-sale when the account approached 30,000 SOL, stating that any further money would only be used as LP in the pool (but it is still unclear how much is the hard cap and how the excess SOL will be allocated).

However, the money that was supposed to be paid was paid, but there are some serious issues with this pre-sale that dissatisfied users:

1. Just letting people put in money, but Skely did not initially set a hard cap for this pre-sale, leading to an increasing amount of SOL in the pre-sale address, which may dilute the share of early investors, causing growing unease and dissatisfaction among the people. Some Twitter users bluntly stated: isn't this just another pre-sale with an AI shell? The ability to withdraw money is what really matters.

2. The allocation mechanism is unclear. Skely stated in a tweet that tokens would be allocated to 'deserving individuals', but this standard is inherently too subjective, and Skely seems to have not elaborated further on this statement.

3. Some have also pointed out that the project's Twitter @aipool_tee has changed names multiple times, and its previous name (cable) was not very nice... However, Skely later tweeted admitting that the project account indeed changed names multiple times, but claimed it was simply to come up with a more suitable name, nothing more.

Summary

It may be that so much money has been collected but the mechanism is still unclear, leading to some community members expressing dissatisfaction with Skely. As of the writing, Skely's Twitter account has been frozen.

However, before his account was suspended, Skely tweeted that the token would be issued on December 24, world standard time, and to prevent excessive sniping, the specific issuance time would not be disclosed.

Regardless of whether this pre-sale is genuinely intended to create some substantial applications or yet another shell game using AI, the hope is that this time it is not the retail investors who are voluntarily putting in money that get hurt...

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