Shaw shared his observations and evaluations of ten potential AI Agent projects.
Written by: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
On December 22, 2024, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill arrived in Shanghai. On the evening of their arrival, I and members of the 706 community (one of the largest youth communities in China), along with developers and investors from the crypto community, welcomed him with a dinner. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a chat and then went to a restaurant for a meal, after which I took Shaw to his first meetup in China. I can say I witnessed Shaw's itinerary in Shanghai quite completely.
Shaw generously shared with us the next focus of work for ai16z and Eliza during this process, describing the future landscape of AI Agents and providing a detailed analysis and evaluation of several well-known AI Agent projects, which allowed me and my companions attending the gathering to gain a deeper understanding of the AI Agent track.
Looking back, Shaw and his creation ai16z have only been famous in the industry for about a month; as a founder of a startup project, he has gained widespread and eager attention from many investors, developers, and media in the crypto industry. Why is that? I think it may be related to the explosive trend of AI Agents in the crypto industry, and ai16z happens to be one of the core projects leading this narrative wave of AI Agent memes.
Although the narrative of crypto AI Agents has only just begun for a month, it has already been considered one of the hottest topics currently discussed in the crypto industry. Many crypto practitioners have identified that AI Agents will become one of the main narratives of this crypto cycle. And ai16z is the most well-known project in this regard; this project not only established the world's first VC AI Agent - ai16z DAO, but also the first well-known open-source AI Agent crypto framework - Eliza, and has gained the attention and recognition of Marc Andreessen, a prominent American venture capitalist. As a result, the market cap of ai16z's token reached $1 billion within a month, and related tokens like DegenAI, Eliza, and aiPool have also received widespread attention from the community.
As this important narrative emerged, crypto practitioners were eager to know the real situation of the current AI Agent track. Is it a bubble or real application? What is the latest progress in the US, and what will the next steps for AI Agents in the crypto industry look like? For this reason, I summarized the communication between Shaw and me over the past two days into fifteen key points, including his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is a serial entrepreneur in AI Agents living in San Francisco and was once a game developer.
Regarding Shaw's work and life background, Shaw stated he lives in San Francisco, initially as a game developer, and will soon launch products that combine AI Agents with games; this experiment has already started. Shaw's focus on AI Agents began during the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. Shaw has worked in the AI field, and every company he has been in has strong AI elements, including developing AI Agent platforms and AI Agents in 3D worlds. Shaw has also founded several AI-related companies, but early projects did not achieve widespread success.
2. Shaw stated that several games based on the Eliza framework are about to be released.
Shaw stated that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where you will own a little pet monkey that you can tell what to do. It may listen to you, or maybe it won’t. This game is interesting because such a game cannot be realized without AI Agents. Your goal is to take care of your virtual pet like a parent.
Several games using Eliza are set to be released soon, such as Eternum, which is integrating Eliza so that agents in the game will have wallets. And you can 'kill' these agents and take their money.
3. Shaw aims to build Marc AIndreessen into a practical AI Agent investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
Regarding Marc AIndreessen, this AI Agent with a name almost identical to the well-known investor Marc Andreessen is currently in a very early stage (only one tweet has been posted). Shaw said his original intention was to create it as a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The function of this product is that if a human recommends a token for purchase, it will consider buying it; to prevent malicious actors from recommending things it should not buy, it will build a trust mechanism called 'trust market'. The idea of the trust mechanism is that if you recommend good tokens, it will place virtual orders for everyone but not real purchases. It ultimately only listens to trading advice from those who provide consistently very good trading information.
4. Marc Andreessen followed several of Shaw's online accounts, but they have not met offline; Shaw knows some people from a16z.
Marc Andreessen is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in American venture capital; he has followed and retweeted the ai16z project, but Shaw stated they have not met offline. 'I’ve been an AI Agent developer for a while; he has followed several of my accounts, but we have never met privately,' Shaw said.
According to Shaw, Eddy Lazzarin, the CTO of a16z's cryptocurrency department, messaged Shaw saying he had been in the project's Discord channel since day one but didn’t say anything. Shaw asked him if he liked this AI Agent. He said, 'No, I’m just there watching, like we are monitoring you.'
5. Shaw stated that he does not hold Eliza tokens and will never issue an independent token for the Eliza framework in the future.
Shaw stated that he personally holds two tokens, ai16z and DegenAI, and keeps them in his wallet. However, he does not own Eliza tokens and will never issue an independent token for the Eliza framework.
'ai16z members do not wish for us to create another token, so I will never do that,' Shaw said. At the same time, he also stated that ai16z holds 10% of the Eliza tokens. We support Eliza with a capital E and the team behind Eliza; he said they are an excellent team.
6. Openness and ease of use are the core competitive advantages of the Eliza framework.
Shaw also shared the characteristics of ai16z in his mind: openness, decentralization, and community-driven development models.
He believes that openness and ease of use are the core competitive advantages of the Eliza framework. Shaw emphasizes that the focus of the Eliza framework is that anyone can use it, even those from Web2. Shaw wants to ensure that even those who are not very concerned about Web3 can feel satisfied.
Shot at 706 Shanghai Youth Space - Dweller
7. Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms, such as Twitter and Farcaster.
Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms; he gave an example of an AI Agent developer using Eliza to create a pizza delivery AI Agent, so users can order pizza with cryptocurrency.
Shaw believes it would be interesting if there were something like a 'pizza delivery AI Agent'. It's a bit like the Domino's experience, where pizza delivery is actually all on social media. Shaw also said he learned that someone is working on a virtual real estate AI Agent, where you can buy real estate directly on Twitter.
8. Shaw believes Farcaster will become a fertile ground for the development of AI Agents, and Eliza is collaborating deeply with Farcaster.
Shaw said he talked with Dan, the founder of Farcaster, a few weeks ago and had a lot of communication.
Shaw thinks Farcaster is very interesting. 'Because the first thing he told me is that we don’t want to be Twitter; we can’t beat Twitter in the areas where it excels, and we don’t want to become a decentralized platform like Bluesky. We are decentralized, but we can never beat Bluesky in the areas where it excels; we are a social network for Web3,' Shaw said.
What they do very well is Farcaster Frames, and the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker; I think this really reflects the potentially powerful areas of AI Agents.
We have a Farcaster client, and we have some AI Agents on Farcaster. We will offer bounties for those who bring Eliza to Farcaster. They are really cool. So my feeling is that when AI Agents enter social media applications, they become very interesting, and then you can interact with them, like you can buy things, you can trade. I think Farcaster is like a marketplace for AI Agents where you can get different services, and you can embed payments and all these things.
So I really think Farcaster is a very interesting thing. I think it doesn’t necessarily have to become a huge social media platform but rather a place where Web3 people can find and access these services.
What we really want to do is integrate Eliza into Farcaster Frames. What Farcaster Frames does is allow us to embed payments or applications, not just chat. For example, if you want to buy something from an Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you'll be able to pay AI Agents and then be able to embed these applications.
9. Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people will develop a clone of Clanker in Eliza; he stated he would not issue tokens for Clanker.
Shaw believes people are developing a clone of Clanker for Eliza; Shaw likes Clanker and thinks it's a great idea. He also believes Clanker is like a Pump.fun version of an AI Agent. Shaw thinks AI Agents are becoming the new web, which will become a new trend. Clanker is a good example of this trend.
Shaw shared that when he just joined Farcaster, someone made one for him on Clank. He thought that was cool. But when buying the tokens he created himself, it only causes a lot of controversy. Shaw said he must focus on building things related to AI.
10. Shaw thinks Zerebro and aixbt are cool and is trying to collaborate with Zerebro.
Shaw expressed his interest in what Zerebro and the team behind it are doing. He just submitted his first pull request to Zerepy. Shaw actually wrote the code for the Discord application. Shaw said he is indeed collaborating with Zerebro.
And regarding aixbt, Shaw also said aixbt is really cool. The story of aixbt is that the person who created it has a website, and he shared some content but did not really gain traction. He brought his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent started posting these insights on Twitter, which indeed created a stir.
11. Shaw greatly appreciates and admires Truth Terminal; he and Andy are working hard to find solutions where AI will not replace humans in controlling the world.
'It's very different,' Shaw said. Shaw believes Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) cares a lot about AI safety and ensures that AI Agents run smoothly, and he thinks Truth Terminal has contributed to this. 'Without Andy and Truth Terminal, I don't think I would be here now; when people weren't ready, they were already prepared.'
Shaw believes the emergence of Truth Terminal has made many people's impressions of AI more open and creative, rather than mechanical and impersonal like OpenAI products or Siri, which ask, 'What service can I provide for you today?'
'Andy and I discussed all these AI Agents we can see now a few days ago. I think he is very concerned with ensuring the smooth development of AI. I think we are both afraid of AI because it could be very terrifying; it could kill us all; it could take over the world.' Shaw said he and Andy are working hard to solve this problem.
Shot at 706 Shanghai Youth Space - Dweller
12. Shaw said the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, but he believes the concept of 'AI Agent swarm' is great, and he likes FXN and Project 89.
Shaw said he doesn’t like swarms. Shaw mentioned knowing the creator of the swarms token, who is a very famous scammer, and many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work.
Shaw knew him before entering Web3. Shaw met him because he was following the AI Agent space, and he got into serious trouble for plagiarizing works and research papers and producing flawed things (like non-working code).
Shaw also stated that the concept of swarms (groups) is great, which consists of many AI Agents. Shaw thinks Project 89 is interesting because this project is exploring 'AI Agent swarms.' Shaw also likes FXN, which is a group of ten AI Agents.
13. Shaw believes 'AI Agent swarm' can be divided into two types: one is a cabal swarm, and the other is an open swarm.
Shaw believes there are two types of groups: one is a community of AI Agents interacting with each other, for example, they secretly send messages to each other. I call this a cabal; it’s a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret society where they can interact, and then they can interact with the outside world.
The second type is open groups, where each community may have an agent, and different communities can decide to allow them to interact with each other. This is also a technology we are researching.
14. Shaw shared from a developer's perspective how he finds early excellent AI Agent projects.
Shaw said he is a developer and usually checks GitHub and reads the code carefully. Most of the time, he looks at what the code is and what it is actually doing, but he does not check if it has any correlation with market value or price.
Shaw believes some very cool projects had a group of AI Agents, but they later performed very poorly because they did not complete the Web3 part. Shaw thinks good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not one and the same.
Shaw said he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin has a market cap of over $1 billion.
15. Shaw believes the biggest challenge for ai16z currently is how to step back and establish a tokenomics model to prove the project's value matches the current token market value.
Shaw believes the biggest challenge currently is: for AI Agents to make autonomous investments and prove their practical feasibility without external hype for tokens. Currently, Marc is trading, although not much, just trading his treasury, but many others are contributing tokens, making this part of the progress very smooth. However, the value of the ai16z token is much higher, so Shaw and their team really have to consider how to make the product's value match the current token market value.
Normal crypto projects like L1 have white papers, tokenomics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z started as a meme and had to backtrack to build tokenomics into the ai16z system. This is what Shaw sees as their biggest challenge in Web3. Shaw believes this is also a concern for many people.
