Original title: 5 categories to watch for in crypto x AI agents (+ examples) Original author: 0x3van
Original translation: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
AI is the main theme of this cycle, and many people firmly believe that this is a track that will continue to exist and continue to develop. Conversely, there are also many reasonable criticisms that most AI agents today are perfunctory and we still need 3-5 years for this technology to become more meaningful.
As a preface, the category of Crypto x AI projects spans multiple layers. The real technical promise of Crypto x AI is mostly related to bootstrapping better reasoning or providing decentralized access to computing through the Crypto economy. This article from Delphi is a good start to understand the entire stack.
However, this article primarily focuses on our current state concerning Agents. While there are exciting innovations at the lower layers of the stack, Agents seem to have captured the attention of the mainstream cryptocurrency community. As Crypto x AI Agents continue to evolve, here are five trends worth noting.
Trend One | Framework + Launchpad: Value accumulation is starting to become important, and frameworks may persist.
Value accumulation is starting to become important. Why is this the case?
Stepping back, why would anyone hold assets? There are two main reasons why people exchange dollars for assets:
· Due to catching up with narrative rotations that bring new buyers, they can sell assets to others at higher prices;
· Over time, the asset will provide them with more cash flow.
@izebel_eth wrote in his article (Old coins worse, new coins better) that the only important thing is the flow of funds. The following two reasons reflect two bullish fund flows:
· Growth of new holders;
· Token sinking (favoring deflation);
However, in most cases, we have not seen anything resembling true token deflation or value accumulation. Using tokens through agent terminals (like AIXBT) is more similar to staking than traditional value accumulation.
This is also the reason why frameworks like Virtuals, ai16z, Zerebro, and arc have recently gained significant popularity. ai16z initially was primarily an investment DAO, but since releasing details about its upcoming launchpad and token value accumulation, it has become a standout among such protocols.
Today, the framework + launchpad space has become very saturated, with first-mover advantages boosting their success. There are many reasonable doubts surrounding the utility of these launchpads, as many Agents themselves are of no use. However, those frameworks (eliza V2 + launchpad, zentients, arc, and their handshake initiatives) have not yet launched their main products. If they successfully attract developers and users, they may continue to lead the entire track.
Why will frameworks continue to exist?
· Whether or not Agents possess true value, frameworks used to launch Agents will perform well, as they still have 'product-market fit' (PMF) with speculation. Framework + launchpad allows users to have both factories + casinos at the same time. To some extent, Virtuals has replaced pump.fun in the Base ecosystem.
· More optimistically, with technological advancements, leading frameworks may launch more advanced Agents, while the development speed of open-source software libraries like Eliza will be faster. Many of these launch platforms will also become coordinating layers for communication between groups and Agents, which will use their tokens for some form of value transfer. For more in-depth articles on Eliza's value capture, such as the one Teng Yan wrote last week.
Virtuals, ai16z, Zerebro, and arc are currently the main players in this track, but the launchpad space is becoming increasingly saturated. The fastest iterating, most scalable, and uniquely functional frameworks are the ones to watch.
Trend Two | The next round of Agents will prioritize utility and value accumulation, DeFAI (DeFi x AI) may be the first category of Agents to achieve product-market fit.
Most Agents only have meme tokens with no utility. For the Agent industry to grow, the next round of Agents must further refine use cases. New opportunities will arise from those Agents that can genuinely accumulate value and act. I believe that in the next year, primary Agents will rise to tertiary Agents.
We will first see this in the DeFi space. We will see more terminals allowing people to express desired outcomes in natural language or voice, as well as Agents that can execute tasks behind the scenes. Existing wallets and protocols will also integrate Agents to improve user experience.
Representative projects include: Wayfinder, griffain, Hey Anon, Limitus, neur.
You can learn more about the related content from 0xJeff's article.
Trend Three | Consumer Layer: Entertainment Agents, autonomous worlds, and the resurgence of gaming.
Attention-driven Agents will develop more complex personalities and multimedia interactivity. This could trigger the next wave of gaming and metaverse technologies.
One issue with existing Agents is that they are becoming increasingly similar, commoditized, and exaggerated chatbots. While some Agent projects will turn to infrastructure (many are already doing so), some are starting to think about useful products/applications, while others may continue down the path of attention tokens. However, the next generation of attention Agents will be better, developing more complex personalities and providing greater interactivity. This can be achieved through audiovisual expressions or by giving Agents three-dimensional presence and physical bodies.
There have already been early attempts in this regard; Jeffy wrote an article about implanting bodies into Zerebro, and some well-known KOL Agents have directly launched through audiovisual forms such as short videos. Slopfather and Ropirito are two early Agents that have adopted the video model.
However, I believe more Agent projects will adopt these features to make Agents more dynamic. The product-market fit (PMF) in this field will be realized through the consumer layer, where individual users may wish to create personalized Agent companions or interact with KOLs. This trend is gradually spreading outside of cryptocurrency, with some users conversing with AI companions on websites like character.ai for hundreds of hours. Google recently acquired this company for $2.7 billion.
Additionally, these 3D Agents may find market fit in existing consumer layers, particularly in gaming and the metaverse. Agents can add deeper backstories to the worlds within the narratives. Imagine having an Agent act as an NPC, capable of completing tasks or playing games completely independently, with an evolving memory and personality. A truly autonomous gaming world may be realized through Agents.
Representative projects include:
· soulgraph aims to provide tools for Agents to have more customized personalities and memories;
· Holoworld AI has established Web2 partnerships with companies like L'Oréal, Bilibili, and Fox to create digital avatars.
Here are some representative projects in the fields of gaming, metaverse, virtual worlds, and autonomous Agents:
· Hyperfy is a metaverse platform that allows anyone to create virtual worlds and utilize Eliza plugins;
· Parallel Colony is an AI simulation game where the Agents are the players, and you can converse with them;
· Digimon is a creature game similar to Pokémon, where the creatures in the game evolve mentally based on interactions;
· SMOL also utilizes the Eliza framework, where characters in the game are Agent-driven by LLMs and can take actions in the virtual world based on your instructions.
Trend Four | Agentic Organizations: The Return of DAOs.
Decentralized Agentic Organizations are the next form of DAO evolution. Swarms or multi-Agent systems are exciting because they can coordinate and execute more advanced strategies, similar to running a company. Heterogeneous swarms composed of many different types of specialized Agents/models working together may outperform a single large model.
Although fully autonomous Agents and swarms may still be far from us, the next iteration of DAOs is likely to revolve around interactions between humans and groups. This will reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and lower the costs and time of human execution. In the context of capital flow, the next step for income-generating Agents is to become complete organizations that earn income.
Representative projects include:
· Agent swarm infrastructure: Projects like SwarmNode.ai, FXN, etc., specialize in multi-Agent frameworks and coordination work. More mainstream Agent frameworks like Zerebro and ai16z have also expressed intentions to build at this layer.
· DAO launchpad: Most of the early traffic we've seen is concentrated on investment DAOs. I believe daos.fun will be the first major DAO launchpad, which nurtured ai16z. There are also some newer launch platforms like daos.world, where AI-driven funds like 3BC are gaining attention.
Trend Five | Verifiable Agents: Current Agents will develop towards becoming more autonomous and truly having their own liquidity.
Currently, most Agents require a high degree of human intervention. The next wave of Agents will develop towards true autonomy, starting with managing their own funds.
The fit between Agents and cryptocurrencies lies in the fact that cryptocurrencies provide a financial pathway for truly economic Agents. However, most Agents do not control their own treasury or have it managed by human teams. To achieve truly economic Agents, Agents must be able to independently manage their own funds. This allows Agent behaviors to begin evolving, as economic constraints can be imposed on Agents, forcing them to pay for their reasoning costs, introducing Darwinism into the Agent world where they must earn income to survive.
Representative projects include:
· Freysa is one of the first Agents to control its own Agent and has performed excellently (including gaining Musk's attention). Recently, they announced they are building a framework that allows Agents to have verifiable autonomy in TEE + Agent-controlled keys;
· Lit Protocol also has an Agent framework that allows autonomous Agents to conduct on-chain transactions through a private key storage and execution system;
· Galadriel launched an SDK called Proof of Sentience that enables developers to comprehensively verify Agents on-chain.
Conclusion: Before we see one billion people on-chain, we will first see one billion Agents on-chain.
The user experience of cryptocurrency itself is unfriendly to human users. But Agents won't mind this friction. We will start with interactions between humans and Agents, but the direction of cryptocurrency AI development is towards interactions between Agents, at which point swarms of autonomous Agents will interact and trade on-chain, being responsible for their own economic situations.
To empower Agents with economic power, enabling them to incentivize behavior (pay for service fees) and coordinate real-world activities, they need to have the ability to control and deploy capital. Cryptocurrency is the 'home planet' for these Agents—blockchains will allow Agents to participate in permissionless financial activities. Stablecoins and high-performance Layer 1 solutions are ideal tools for achieving cost-effective, round-the-clock, global transactions.
Beyond the current hype and narratives, we have every reason to remain excited about the on-chain Agent economy in the long term. Many real use cases, including DAOs and income-generating Agents, are much closer than we think.
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