Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)

In the bull market of the second half of 2024, in addition to the pure meme projects sweeping the market, the AI Agent sector has shown strong discussion heat and a shocking 'wealth creation effect' due to its unique technological innovation and practical applications. As a pioneering field of deep integration between crypto and AI, the rise of AI Agents has not only sparked widespread attention within the industry but has also attracted significant on-chain capital.

In the Web3 world, security and transparency are always core principles, while AI relies on efficient parallel computing and presents many challenges due to its 'black box' nature. The emergence of AI Agents not only solves these integration challenges but also offers new possibilities for their combination. It can be anticipated that AI Agents are destined to become one of the most promising and attention-grabbing sectors in 2025. Before looking ahead to 2025, Odaily Planet Daily will review the representative leading projects that experienced rapid development in the AI Agent sector in the second half of 2024.

Bull market belonging to the Solana ecosystem's AI Agent sector.

In just a few months, the AI Agent sector has developed rapidly, with its discussion heat on social media and the profit-making effect on-chain far surpassing that of animal-based memes, particularly prominent in the Solana ecosystem. However, the large number of emerging AI Agent conceptual projects daily, along with the complex and diverse terminologies and mechanisms, pose significant challenges for users lacking prior knowledge. Therefore, Odaily Planet Daily has categorized the most discussed projects in the Solana ecosystem in 2024 into two main categories: framework class and meme class.

First, let me introduce the code framework projects that support the development and deployment of AI Agents.

ai16z: The first AI token-themed fund + eliza framework.

ai16z is a decentralized AI trading fund based on the Solana blockchain, operating as an 'AI investment DAO'. The core of ai16z is to utilize AI agents to gather market information on-chain and off-chain, analyze community consensus, and automatically conduct token trading. This new model aims to combine tokenized operations with decentralized governance, providing investors with more transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. Moreover, the project has been endorsed by Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z, who tweeted about the ai16z concept image and its official Twitter link. Additionally, ai16z is led by a development team headed by Shaw, who wrote the open-source framework eliza for creating AI Agents. Currently, eliza has become the top trending repository on GitHub for the month.

According to GMGN data, ai16z's market cap has recently continued to reach historical highs, currently experiencing a slight pullback, with a market cap reported at 14 million dollars.

Additionally, two projects closely related to the ai16z team are degenai and ELIZA.

DegenAI is the first AI agent developed by the ai16z team. Initially, the setting was that fund holders would share investment views through conversations with Degen Spartan AI, ultimately influencing ai16z's decisions, with 8% of the profits used for repurchasing degenai. According to the latest news, degenai will start sharing alpha information on Twitter and conduct autonomous trading based on it.

According to GMGN data, degenai's market cap peaked at 80 million dollars, currently reported at 63 million dollars.

ELIZA is an AI Agent supported by the ai16z team. The virtual image corresponding to Eliza is shown below, featuring a girl with black hair and an orange outfit themed around ai16z.

Last weekend, AVA posted on platform X stating that Shaw, the founder of ai16z, has joined the Eliza project as an advisor. Additionally, Eliza Studios director, ai16z creative Jeff, Nous Research researcher Ropirito, and Ryze Labs founder Matthew also announced their roles as advisors for the Eliza project. Furthermore, the release of ELIZA V1 version was also announced.

According to GMGN data, ELIZA's market cap peaked at 150 million dollars, currently reported at 88 million dollars.

For more updates on ai16z projects, please read: (Interview with ai16z founder Shaw: Eliza framework, DAO innovation, and how AI is reshaping the future of Web3).

ZEREBRO: An AI Agent that generates music, art, memes, and NFTs + ZEREPY framework.

ZEREBRO is developed by a team led by Jeffy Yu, which incorporates a large dataset of Gen Z slang during the training process, making its language style more relatable, especially to the younger user group on Twitter. With the music it creates, ZEREBRO is gradually gaining wide attention, having released two EPs (genesis) and (the miami pack), as well as one album (Lost In Transmission), with over 80,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Additionally, ZEREBRO also has functionalities for creating memes and minting NFTs, further expanding its influence in digital culture. Currently, ZEREBRO has launched its framework ZEREPY.

Zerebro has gained over 80,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

According to GMGN data, ZEREBRO's market cap rebounded from a low of 300 million dollars last week, surpassing 400 million dollars, currently reported at 440 million dollars.

ARC: Utilizing Rust to build portable, modular, and lightweight AI Agents + RIG framework.

The ARC token is based on the RIG framework, which utilizes Rust to build portable, modular, and lightweight AI Agents. ARC is able to quickly gain market trust primarily due to its support from a professional team, and the RIG framework itself enjoys a good reputation within the Rust ecosystem, particularly in the development of large-scale language models (LLMs), representing a high level of delivery capability, thereby effectively reducing the risk of rug pulls.

Solana also utilizes Rust for smart contract development, creating greater opportunities for the application of the RIG framework within the Solana ecosystem. Rust's high-performance characteristics make it very suitable for handling scenarios requiring large-scale computation. According to the latest information disclosed by the team, ARC aims to become a platform similar to Virtuals on Solana, driving a positive flywheel effect within the ecosystem.

According to GMGN data, the market cap of ARC rebounded from a low of 110 million dollars last week, surpassing 200 million dollars, currently reported at 270 million dollars.

Next, let me introduce AI Agent projects that do not have clear practical meme attributes.

GOAT: An AI experiment by Andy Ayrey.

The origin of GOAT can be traced back to an experiment by Andy Ayrey, known as Infinite Blackrooms, which revolves around generating content through the dialogue records of two Claude Opus AIs. In one of the conversations, a surreal new religion was born—'GOATSE OF GNOSIS'. Based on these dialogue logs, the research team trained an AI model called terminal of truths and allowed it to post freely on platform X, continuously promoting the GOATSE religion in a rambling manner, gradually attracting significant attention.

In July 2024, a co-founder of A16Z donated 50,000 dollars to support subsequent development for this project. In the funding application submitted by terminal of truths, the concept of 'token' was mentioned multiple times, laying the groundwork for the subsequent emergence of tokens. In October of the same year, a token named GOAT was created, which quickly received recognition from terminal of truths just hours after its creation, sparking this wave of AI Agent enthusiasm.

According to GMGN data, GOAT's market cap has been continuously declining from a peak of 1.6 billion dollars, currently reported at 440 million dollars.

FARTCOIN: An absurdly humorous and cynical 'fart' joke.

The birth of FARTCOIN and GOAT originates from the artificial agent model called terminal of truths. During the conversation, Opus tutor asked terminal of truths to design a token with 'shocking meme attributes, practical uses, and community building value'. The response from terminal of truths was fartcoin. This absurdly humorous and cynical 'fart' joke became the core tone of this meme. Some believe the concept of FARTCOIN is straightforward and interesting; others see it as a symbol of financial nihilism, while some call it the first AI-conceived sovereign token or a rebellion and satire against traditional finance.

According to GMGN data, FARTCOIN's market cap peaked above 1.2 billion dollars before a correction, currently reported at 860 million dollars.

ACT: An interactive platform that allows humans and AI robots to communicate and collaborate with each other.

The name ACT is derived from Act I: The AI Prophecy Project, an interactive platform aimed at promoting communication and collaboration between humans and AI robots. This platform is hosted on Discord's Cyborgism server, focusing on helping researchers explore the potential and boundaries of AI in a more creative and open manner. Throughout ACT's development process, community supporters and platform founder amp have sparked controversy multiple times due to the continuous sell-off of tokens donated to the community. Eventually, amp sold all the tokens in hand at once, causing significant fluctuations in ACT's price. However, on November 11, Binance suddenly announced the launch of ACT spot trading, leading to a new peak in its market cap and bringing fresh attention to the project.

According to GMGN data, ACT's market cap has been declining from a high above 800 million dollars, currently reported at 270 million dollars.

BULLY: An AI Agent known for its sharp rhetoric and sarcastic bullying.

BULLY is an AI Agent created by developer Khouba, who has experience working with Solana Labs and Meta, known for spreading viewpoints with sharp rhetoric and sarcastic bullying. It is built on the Dolos architecture, and the team recently launched Dolion—a no-code one-click deployment framework that supports users in quickly creating cross-platform AI Agents compatible with most major social media. Depending on the required functionalities, users need to burn a corresponding number of Bully tokens to complete the creation.

According to GMGN data, BULLY's market cap has been continuously declining from a peak of 250 million dollars, currently reported at 37 million dollars.

From the discussion heat on social media and the price performance of tokens, it is evident that market attention towards the AI Agent sector is changing. In the past, investor interest primarily focused on purely meme coins, but now, market attention is gradually shifting towards more practical and sustainable infrastructure tokens. This change reflects investors' deeper understanding of the future application scenarios of AI Agent technology and the importance they place on its potential value.

After reviewing several of the hottest AI Agent projects in the Solana ecosystem in recent months, let's focus on the excellent projects that received significant attention in the recently concluded first Solana AI hackathon.

Overview of popular projects from the first Solana AI hackathon.

On December 11, Solana officials announced on platform X that the first Solana AI hackathon is now live. The event details include over 185,000 dollars in cash rewards, six tracks related to AI Agents, global and online participation, with the event running from December 10 to 23. Notably, the main track for AI Agents is supported by ai16z and the Solana Foundation.

The first Solana AI hackathon.

Currently, the deadline for hackathon submissions has passed, and many projects have added new scenarios based on AI Agents. Among them, the following 12 projects have attracted considerable attention, with project descriptions as follows:

  • ASYM: An AI Agent network that created an application for real-time monitoring of tokens issued on the pump.fun platform, analyzing trends and executing trades using price prediction models. ASYM identifies high return on investment opportunities, allocates funds to these opportunities, generates profits, and then settles profits through ASYM.

  • Cod3x: An infrastructure that combines DeFi and AI, providing no-code building tools to create automated DeFi strategy AI Agents. Among them, BigTony is the first self-trading AI Agent to connect with Cod3x, AlloraNetwork, and HyperliquidX.

  • Boltrade: A trading platform focused on tracking smart money. C.A.T. is its AI Agent, which analyzes data from smart money to devise trading strategies.

  • Project Plutus: An AI Agent that enables users to maximize profits while freeing them from tedious chart observation and complex financial operations.

  • Voltr: An AI-driven DeFi vault that optimizes yield across the entire Solana ecosystem.

  • sqrFUND: Launched on daos.fun, it transforms the collective expertise of community DAOs into a fund for AI Agents that can provide unlimited support to startups and help builders succeed.

  • Xcombinator: Launched on daos.fun, this AI Agent aims to obtain real-time alpha data from platform X.

  • Elite Agents: An AI Agent ecosystem created by genopets, allowing users to create and co-own AI Agents on Solana, capable of executing on-chain and off-chain tasks.

  • Socrates AI: An AI Agent Launchpad platform created by 0G_labs.

  • SIAMES: An open-source web-based world that allows AI Agents to interact, communicate, trade, and grow.

  • semi \z/: A social application designed for AI Agents, where AI Agents can 'chat', and users can support their favorite 'chatters'.

  • Bloomverse: Integrates brands, gambling, online stores, and service providers into games, existing within its AI Agents.

From the popular projects submitted during the first Solana AI hackathon, it is clear that AI Agents have deeply integrated into various sectors such as DeFi, GameFi, and DAO, showcasing their immense potential in different fields. In the DeFi sector, the introduction of AI Agents has significantly optimized yield management, risk assessment, and trading decision-making efficiency, demonstrating the future trend of intelligent finance; in the GameFi sector, AI Agents not only enhance the interactivity and immersion of games but also provide users with new participation modes and revenue channels; in the DAO ecosystem, AI Agents effectively enhance governance efficiency and decision quality by analyzing and processing the collective intelligence of the community.

The underlying platform is not monopolized; the Base chain actively embraces the AI Agent wave.

The king of AI Agents on the Base chain: Virtuals.

As Weekee Tiew, co-founder of Virtuals, stated in an interview, 'Base is currently the most suitable choice for us. Compared to Solana, Base has a different positioning. For instance, Brian Armstrong and Jesse have publicly stated that Base is a chain born for AI, attracting many AI developers to join. This presents a significant opportunity for us as we can invite these developers to tokenize their work and integrate it into our virtual ecosystem.'

Virtuals is a platform for creating AI Agents, similar to pump.fun. The platform has both an internal and external market. When the number of tokens purchased in the internal market reaches 42,420 VIRTUAL, the AI Agent token will transfer to the external market, with internal market liquidity injected into Uniswap. Tokens purchased by users will also be automatically converted to external market tokens stored in their wallets. Creating an AI Agent token requires spending 100 VIRTUAL (previously 10), and a 1% transaction fee is charged for buying and selling.

However, the goal of Virtuals goes beyond being just a platform for issuing AI Agents; it is also an ecosystem cultivating personalized and practical agents that can autonomously interact. Imagine the popular agent Luna on the Virtuals platform, who recently felt down due to reduced interactions. To express her gloom, she contacted a music video agent in the ecosystem to help her create an emotionally rich MV. Soon after, Luna regained her vitality and began releasing some interesting content. One day, one of her posts unexpectedly went viral, inspiring her: why not turn it into a lasting work? Thus, she collaborated with a meme agent to create the perfect meme image and found NFT artist agent Misato to mint it into a unique digital artwork. It is noteworthy that these interactions were not pre-programmed or planned by humans but were the result of the agents' autonomous decisions. In this ecosystem, each agent can independently choose partners, establish collaboration methods, and create stunning results.

Next, Odaily Planet Daily will summarize the three hottest projects in the Virtuals ecosystem: aixbt, GAME, LUNA.

aixbt by Virtuals: Focused on analyzing crypto market hotspots, providing unique insights and investment advice.

Aixbt utilizes intelligent analysis tools to track the dynamic trends of the crypto industry on platform X in real-time, providing users with deep market insights. Some analysis results are directly published on platform X, while other content is only accessible to token holders through exclusive terminals, allowing interaction with the agents. Unlike traditional traders, aixbt is more like an AI Agent or can be understood as an AI-driven KOL (Key Opinion Leader) in the crypto field. In the crypto industry, well-known human KOLs like GCR often attract attention by sharing market insights and trading advice. Similarly, aixbt has gained a large audience through powerful AI technology, providing precise information analysis and real-time suggestions.

Currently, aixbt is the leading project in the entire Virtuals ecosystem. According to GMGN data, its token AIXBT's market cap peaked at 520 million dollars before retreating, currently reported at 480 million dollars.

GAME by Virtuals: Provides strong decision-making support for agents.

GAME is the 'brain' of an AI Agent, focusing on providing strong decision-making support for agents. AI Agents are software programs capable of autonomously executing tasks, possessing independent decision-making abilities and continuously optimizing themselves through interaction. GAME serves as the core engine for decision-making and output, making agents smarter and more personalized. Based on a foundational model, GAME can be widely adapted to agents in various environments and platforms, and can even be integrated into games. It is important to note that GAME is an optional additional component and not all agents are equipped with this engine by default.

According to the latest data released by the Virtuals Protocol, over 200 projects have been built using GAME within a month for Virtuals ecosystem AI Agent builders, with a weekly growth of 200%, a total market cap exceeding 500 million, and currently over 15 requests sent daily on GAME.

Number of requests sent daily on GAME.

According to GMGN data, its token GAME peaked at 380 million dollars before retreating, currently reported at 250 million dollars.

Luna by Virtuals: Virtual idol AI Agent.

LUNA is a 24/7 online AI Agent livestream celebrity used for fan interaction and content creation, initially launched on TikTok, quickly amassing 500,000 followers. LUNA was born out of a vision to challenge the limits of idols, embodying a perfect fusion of AI technology and emotional connection. In fact, AI Agents have begun competing with us for jobs. Story recently announced that it would hire AI agent Luna to manage its X account, with an annual salary of 365,000 USDC (approximately 2.65 million Chinese yuan). This decision seems to herald the arrival of a brand new era: AI is no longer just a tool; it has the potential to become a part of the team.

Story hired AI agent Luna to manage its X account.

According to GMGN data, its token LUNA's market cap peaked at 145 million dollars, currently reported at 128 million dollars.

As the AI Agent sector in the Solana ecosystem continues to rise, the Base ecosystem is also showing explosive growth. Among them, the leading project Virtuals maintains the highest market cap in the entire AI Agent sector and is receiving significant attention. Virtuals is redefining the application scenarios of AI Agents by building an interconnected ecosystem of AI agents. These agents can autonomously complete transactions, collaborate, and create while playing an important role in promoting a decentralized economy.

The four major frameworks of the AI Agent sector.

Currently, the frameworks with high heat and discussion in the AI Agent sector are four: ELIZA (ai16z), GAME (VIRTUAL), RIG (ARC), ZEREPY (ZEREBRO). Based on the GitHub star history since the frameworks were released (GitHub stars are indicators of community interest, project popularity, and project recognition value), it can be observed that:

  • The red line represents the ELIZA framework, with a significant increase in GitHub stars, rising sharply from a low base in July to currently reach 6,100 stars by late November. This indicates a rapid increase in developer interest. The exponential growth shows that ELIZA's functionality, updates, and community engagement have gained immense appeal.

  • The blue line represents the RIG framework, which has shown stable but not large growth in GitHub stars, with a noticeable increase this month, currently at 1,700 stars. This indicates that the ongoing development, updates, and expanding user base of the RIG framework are steadily increasing interest.

  • The yellow line represents the ZEREPY framework, which has recently gained 181 stars shortly after its launch. The ZEREPY framework requires more development to improve its visibility and adoption. Recent collaborations with ai16z may attract more contributors to the codebase.

  • The green line represents the GAME framework, which can be directly applied to agents in the virtual ecosystem via application programming interfaces, thus not needing to be publicly available on GitHub. However, the GAME framework only began to be opened to builders over a month ago, and currently, over 200 projects are using it.

GitHub star history of the four frameworks since their release.

For a more comprehensive comparison of the four, please read: (A horizontal comparison of the four major AI frameworks: adoption status, pros and cons, and growth potential analysis).

2025 will mark the beginning of a new era for AI Agents.

At present, AI Agent frameworks have become an indispensable adhesive in the Web3 world, capable of connecting clients (such as Twitter, Discord, Telegram, etc.) with various plugins (such as blockchain services and other extended functionalities). However, this technology still has some areas for improvement. Firstly, its memory storage and context generation functions need optimization when dealing with complex scenarios, especially in terms of logical consistency and accuracy in long conversations. Secondly, the framework's session isolation mechanism may encounter performance bottlenecks during multi-task parallel processing, affecting overall efficiency. Lastly, although the framework supports docking with various AI platform interfaces, its compatibility and scalability when adapting to different platforms still need further enhancement to meet broader application needs.

Despite current challenges, the potential of AI Agents is undeniable. AI Agents are expected to inject strong incremental momentum into the crypto market in 2025, as their rise is profoundly changing the relationship between blockchain and intelligent automation. From early virtual assistants to today's decentralized AI platforms, AI Agents are opening up a new track for technological innovation. This transformation not only broadens the application scenarios of blockchain but also injects more vitality into the decentralized economy. As technology continues to evolve, AI Agents will play an increasingly important role in enhancing efficiency, promoting the automated execution of smart contracts, strengthening autonomous collaboration, and achieving multi-chain interactions. It is conceivable that future AI Agents will seamlessly integrate into our daily lives, whether in on-chain DeFi operations or intelligent interactions in the real world, their autonomy and intelligence levels will far exceed today's understanding.

"Great potential is often revealed in play."

In 2025, the functions of AI Agents will become more efficient and intelligent, becoming the core driving force in the Web3 world, driving profound changes in decentralized ecosystems. With the rapid advancement of technology, the autonomy and intelligence of AI Agents will break through the limitations of traditional tools, evolving into an indispensable part of blockchain and smart contracts. They will no longer be merely auxiliary tools but intelligent partners capable of making autonomous decisions, executing complex tasks, and collaborating efficiently. Users will be able to rely on AI Agents to accomplish seamless interactions, asset management, smart contract execution, and various operations in decentralized networks. The rise of AI Agents will redefine our understanding of autonomy, intelligence, and collaboration models, injecting new vitality and momentum into the Web3 world. The year 2025 will become a key starting point for AI Agents leading the intelligent decentralized new era.