The AI and AI Agent sectors have recently exploded, with the entire sector experiencing a rise today. In the past 24 hours, the AI Agent sector surged by 20.23%, while the AI sector rose by 14.44%, far exceeding the gains of other sectors. What about the rise of related AI tokens? Can this popular narrative continue? This article will provide a summary. (Background: Ten investment insights on the AI Agent track: capture the main wave of ai16z, and beginners should prioritize head projects..) (Background supplement: Dragonfly partner: AI Agents are merely meme coin-equipped chatbots and will eventually die.) On the first working day of 2025, the crypto market welcomed investors with a broad rise across all sectors. Bitcoin started to oscillate upward from $93,700 in the early morning, peaking at $96,000 before retreating, currently reported at $95,575, an increase of 2.07% in the past 24 hours. However, despite the broad rise, the market was not led by Bitcoin but rather by the recent popular narratives of AI Agents and AI. According to SoSoValue data, the AI Agent sector surged by 20.23% in the past 24 hours, while the AI sector rose by 14.44%, far exceeding other sectors. The Virtual Protocol ecosystem rose together. In the AI Agent sector, projects issued on the AI Agent issuance platform Virtual Protocol on the Base chain showed impressive gains. Below are the recent 24-hour gains of relevant popular tokens: $VIRTUAL: Virtual Protocol platform token, up 24.6% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $5.03 billion, hitting a new high today. $AIXBT: Token Alpha information analysis AI Agent, up 4.34% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $650 million. $GAME: Infrastructure token officially developed by Virtual, up 0.22% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $360 million. $LUNA: AI agent virtual idol, up 8.85% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $170 million. $VADER: AI Agent resembling a crypto VC, up 8.06% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $140 million. The above are the top 5 projects by market cap in the Virtual Protocol ecosystem. Although some tokens did not have significant gains in the past 24 hours, extending the period to 2-3 days shows considerable returns. Additionally, other small-market-cap AI Agent tokens have also benefited from the influx of funds into the Virtual ecosystem, with even more astonishing gains: $WAI: up 93.98% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $35.6 million. $BRO: up 49.83% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $43.4 million. $GEKKO: up 131% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $29.1 million. $H4CK: up 38% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $24.2 million. Ai16z's market cap surpassed $2.5 billion, and Eilza framework tokens rose broadly. On the other hand, the Solana ecosystem AI Agent project Ai16z also reached a market cap of $2.55 billion today, setting a new historical high. Most of the related AI Agent tokens using the Ai16z team’s Eilza framework also showed an upward trend: $AI16Z: starting from the first AI investment DAO, it now also carries the network effects of the entire "Eliza ecosystem (AI Agents developed using the ELIZA framework will airdrop tokens to funds managed by ai16z)". It rose 27.3% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $2.55 billion. $DEGENAI: the first AI Agent launched by the ai16z team, up 2.45% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $89.75 million. $ELIZA: the open-source framework for AI Agents developed by the ai16z team, a popular project on GitHub, up 12% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $155 million. $METAV: the first token for AI Agents autonomously conducting presales built on the Eliza framework, up 58.79% in the past 24 hours, with a market cap of approximately $68 million. The surge of AI and AI Agent related tokens is astonishing. In addition to the two major ecosystems of Virtual Protocol and Ai16z, other AI Agent or AI related projects have also experienced incredible gains during this AI boom: $TAO: up 17.9% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $3.87 billion. $RENDER: up 11% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $3.9 billion. $FET: up 11% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $3.66 billion. $WLD: up 8.19% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $1.94 billion. $ZEREBRO: musician AI Agents, whose development team recently released the AI Agents development framework - ZerePy. Up 36% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $779 million. $SWARMS: concept of collective collaboration for AI Agents. Up 57.88% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $12.1 million. $GOAT: AI meme token. Up 14.8% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $591 million. $FARTCOIN: AI meme token, up 23.95% in the past 24 hours, market cap approximately $1.27 billion. Messari report: The AI Agent boom may peak in Q1 of this year. In addition, the crypto research platform Messari announced its six major predictions for 2025 yesterday, two of which are related to AI Agent predictions. The first is that the fully diluted valuation (FDV) of Virtual Protocol ($4.96 billion) will exceed the fully diluted valuation of TAO ($11 billion) within three months. The other is that the AI Agent framework will peak in Q1 of 2025 and will find it difficult to recover to the Q1 glory afterward, for the following reasons: There is currently insufficient evidence to show that AI Agents can find a sustainable product-market fit. While market speculation has driven a short-term rise, it lacks a solid foundation in the long term. The reason Alt-L1 succeeded during the DeFi Summer is mainly due to the surge in market demand for block space. Currently, AI Agents lack clear demand and have not established a stable user base, making it difficult to replicate a similar growth path. The market is currently more driven by speculative sentiment for the launch of new AI Agent projects. However, as investors gradually realize that these tokens...

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