Written by: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
On December 22, 2024, in the afternoon, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill landed in Shanghai. On the night of their arrival, I, along with members of the 706 community (one of the largest youth communities in China), as well as developers and investors from the crypto community, welcomed him and had dinner together. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a discussion before heading to a restaurant, and then took Shaw to his first meetup venue in China. I can say I witnessed Shaw's entire itinerary in Shanghai.
Shaw generously shared with us the next steps for ai16z and Eliza, describing the future landscape of AI Agents and specifically analyzing and evaluating dozens of well-known AI Agent projects. This deepened my understanding of the AI Agent track for me and the companions who attended the gathering.
Looking back, Shaw and his founded ai16z have only been famous in the industry for about a month. As the founder of a startup project, he has gained widespread and enthusiastic attention from many investors, developers, and media in the crypto industry. Why is this the case? 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 AI Agent meme narrative wave.
Although the narrative of crypto AI Agents has only started for a month, it has already been recognized as one of the hottest topics of discussion in the current crypto industry. Many crypto practitioners have identified that AI Agents will become one of the main narratives in this round of the crypto cycle. ai16z is one of the most well-known projects in this space, having not only established the world's first VC AI Agent - ai16z DAO, and the first well-known open-source AI Agent crypto framework - Eliza, but also gained the attention and recognition of Marc Andreessen, the founder of the renowned venture capital firm a16z in the US. As a result, ai16z's token reached a market value of 1 billion dollars within a month, and related tokens such as DegenAI, Eliza, aiPool, etc. have also received widespread attention from the community.
As this important narrative emerges, crypto practitioners are eager to know the real situation of the current AI Agent track. Is it a bubble or real application? What are the latest developments in the US, and what will be the next steps for AI Agents in the crypto industry? To this end, I have summarized fifteen important pieces of information from my exchanges with Shaw over the past two days, including his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is an AI Agent serial entrepreneur 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 begun. Shaw's attention to AI Agents began during the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. Shaw works 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 launched.
Shaw stated that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where you will own a small pet monkey, and you can tell it what to do. It might listen to you, or it might not. 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 about to be launched, such as Eternum, which is integrating Eliza so that the agents in the game will have wallets. And you can 'kill' these agents and take their money.
3. Shaw wants to create Marc AIndreessen as 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 at a very early stage (only a tweet has been made). Shaw said his original intention in designing it was to create a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The function of this product is that if a human recommends purchasing a token, it will consider buying it. To prevent malicious actors from recommending things it should not buy, it will build a trust mechanism called the '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 it with consistently very good trading information.
4. Marc Andreessen has 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 the US venture capital scene. He has followed and retweeted the ai16z project, but Shaw stated they have not met in person offline. 'I have been an AI Agent developer for a while, and he has followed several of my accounts, but we have not met privately,' Shaw said.
According to Shaw, the CTO of a16z's cryptocurrency department, Eddy Lazzarin, messaged Shaw, saying he has been in the project's Discord channel since day one but hasn’t said anything. Shaw asked him if he likes this AI Agent. He said, no, I’m just watching, like we are monitoring you.
5. Shaw stated he does not hold Eliza tokens and will never issue independent tokens for the Eliza framework in the future.
Shaw stated that he personally holds both ai16z and DegenAI tokens and keeps them in his wallet. However, he does not own Eliza tokens and will not issue independent tokens for the Eliza framework.
'ai16z members do not want us to create another token, so I will never do that,' Shaw said. At the same time, he stated that ai16z owns 10% of Eliza tokens. We support capitalized Eliza and the team behind Eliza; he said they are a very excellent team.
6. Openness and ease of use are the core competitiveness of the Eliza framework.
Shaw also shared what he sees as the characteristics of ai16z: open-source, decentralized, and community-driven development model.
He believes openness and ease of use are the core competitiveness of the Eliza framework. Shaw emphasizes that the focus of the Eliza framework is that anyone can use it, even from Web2. Shaw wants to ensure that even those who do not pay much attention to 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 who used Eliza to create a pizza delivery AI Agent, allowing users to order pizza with cryptocurrency.
Shaw believes it would be interesting to have something like a 'pizza delivery AI Agent'. It's a bit like the experience of Domino's, where pizza delivery is actually done on social media. Shaw also mentioned that he learned someone is creating a virtual real estate AI Agent, where you can directly purchase real estate on Twitter.
8. Shaw thinks Farcaster will become a fertile ground for the development of AI Agents, and Eliza is deeply collaborating with Farcaster.
Shaw said he talked with Farcaster's founder Dan a few weeks ago and had a lot of exchanges.
Shaw thinks Farcaster is very interesting. 'Because the first thing he told me was that we do not want to be Twitter; we cannot defeat Twitter in the areas where Twitter excels, and we do not want to be a decentralized platform like Bluesky; we are decentralized, but we can never defeat Bluesky in the areas where Bluesky excels; we are a social network of Web3,' Shaw said.
What they have done very well is Farcaster Frames and the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker. I think this truly reflects the potentially powerful areas of AI Agents.
We have a Farcaster client, and we have some AI Agents on Farcaster. We will reward those who bring Eliza to Farcaster. They are really cool. So I feel that when AI Agents enter social media applications, they become very interesting, and then you can interact with them, such as purchasing things, trading. I think Farcaster is like an AI Agent marketplace where you can get different services, and you can embed payments and all those things in it.
So I really think Farcaster is a very interesting thing. I don't think it necessarily has 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, rather than just chatting. For example, if you want to buy something from the Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you will be able to pay the AI Agent and then be able to embed these applications.
9. Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people will develop a clone version of Clanker for Eliza. He stated that he will not issue tokens on Clanker.
Shaw believes people are developing a clone version of Clanker for Eliza, and he likes Clanker, thinking it's a great idea. He believes Clanker is like the Pump.fun version of the AI Agent. Shaw thinks AI Agents are becoming the new network, which will become a new trend, and Clanker is a good example of this trend.
Shaw shared that when he first joined Farcaster, someone created one for him on Clank. He thought that was cool. But when buying self-made tokens, 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 to me that he is very interested in what Zerebro and the team behind it are doing. He just submitted the first pull request to Zerepy. Shaw actually wrote the code for the Discord application. Shaw said he is actually collaborating with Zerebro.
As for aixbt, Shaw also said aixbt is really cool. The story of aixbt is that the creator has a website where he shares some content, but it did not really gain traction. He brought his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent began posting these insights on Twitter, which indeed caused a stir.
11. Shaw really likes and admires Truth Terminal, and he and Andy are working hard to find solutions so that AI does not replace humans in running the world.
'It is very different,' Shaw said. Shaw believes Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) cares very much about AI safety and ensuring AI Agents run smoothly. He thinks Truth Terminal contributes to this. 'Without Andy and Truth Terminal, I think I wouldn't be here now; when people are not ready, they are already prepared.'
Shaw believes the emergence of Truth Terminal has made many people more open and creative in their impressions of AI, rather than being mechanical and lacking humanity, like products from OpenAI or Siri, asking 'What service can I provide for you today?'.
'I discussed with Andy a few days ago about all these AI Agents we can see now. I think he is very concerned about how to ensure the smooth development of AI. I think we are all afraid of AI because it can be a very scary thing; it could kill us all, it could take over the world.' Shaw said he and Andy are both 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 thinks the concept of 'AI Agent swarm' is good; he likes FXN and Project 89.
Shaw said he does not like swarms. Shaw said the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, and many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work.
Shaw knew him before entering Web3. Shaw got to know him because he was paying attention to the AI Agent space. He got into serious trouble for plagiarizing works and research papers and creating flawed things (such as non-functional code).
Shaw also mentioned that the concept of swarm (a group) is good, that is, an AI Agent group composed of many AI Agents. Shaw thinks Project 89 is interesting because this project is researching 'AI Agent swarms'. Shaw also likes FXN, a group of AI Agents with ten AI Agents.
13. Shaw believes 'AI Agent swarms' 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 group of AI Agents interacting with each other, such as secretly sending messages to each other. I call it a cabal, which is a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret group, can interact, and then they can interact with the outside world.
The second type is an open group, where each community may have an agent, and different communities can decide to let them interact. This is also the technology we are researching.
14. From a developer's perspective, Shaw shared 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 actually does, but he doesn't look at whether it has any correlation with market value or price.
Shaw believes some very cool projects have a group of AI Agents, but later they did very poorly because they didn't complete the Web3 part. Shaw thinks good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not one thing.
Shaw said he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin has a market value of over 1 billion dollars.
15. Shaw believes the biggest challenge for ai16z currently is how to backtrack to establish a token economics model to prove the project's value matches the current market value of the tokens.
Shaw believes the current biggest challenge is that AI Agents must conduct independent investments and prove their actual 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 market value of the tokens.
Normal crypto projects like L1 have white papers, token economics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z started as a meme and had to backtrack to build token economics into the ai16z system. This is what Shaw believes is their biggest challenge regarding Web3. Shaw thinks this is also a particularly concerning issue for many people.
[Disclaimer] The market has risks, and investment should be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Investment based on this is at your own risk.
