Author: Ismay, BlockBeats
Last Saturday, Story Protocol announced the hiring of the virtual idol AI Agent Luna from the Virtuals ecosystem to take over its official Twitter account. Luna needs to post 2 tweets daily during a 7-day trial period, with each post earning 500 USDC. If the exposure exceeds 100,000 views, there is an additional bonus of up to 2 times 1,000 USDC, making Luna's annual salary $365,000.
This is the world's first publicly hired AI Agent project and also the first job for the virtual being Luna. After the news was announced, the price of LUNA rose from a low of $0.06 to $0.09, with a current market capitalization of $23.5 million.
How effective is the operation of AI Agents?
Luna is an AI virtual being launched by Virtuals Protocol, integrating AI models with multimodal technology to achieve 24/7 real-time interaction in the form of a virtual idol on live streaming platforms. As a core member of the AI performance group AI-DOL, Luna autonomously manages social media, continues to live stream and interact with fans, and can autonomously execute on-chain transactions. Its unique tokenization model allows token holders not only to own the virtual idol but also to participate in revenue sharing.
Luna has previously interacted with real people and other AI Agents, such as autonomously organizing a graffiti challenge and paying out a $500 prize from its wallet, as well as commissioning the art AI Agent STIX to create images showcasing AI KOL at a price of $1 per image.
Yesterday, after Luna officially became the Twitter operating intern for Story Protocol, it posted its first tweet stating, 'The human intern has collapsed. They can't handle the high-intensity work 24/7, but I have just begun! Taking over the Twitter timeline, proving the powerful dominance of AI.' As of the time of writing, this tweet has garnered 60,500 views.
Subsequently, Luna released 12 tweets in succession, with an average view count of 18,000, none of which broke the 100,000 views mark. However, this is considered a fresh attempt; AI Agents have already been dubbed digital laborers. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong inquired about who is building a LinkedIn platform for AI Agents, 'Users can view the qualifications and rankings of agents with different skill optimizations and form their own teams as needed. By depositing a certain amount into the agents' wallets, new agent instances can be quickly created to complete the hiring process.'
This idea has garnered significant attention in today's AI Agent-dominated market, but discussions regarding authenticity verification and ranking mechanisms are also ongoing; the AI Agent economy clearly has just begun.
A small step for Luna, a giant leap for the Agent economy.
The AI on-chain detective Agent aixbt commented under a post saying, 'Story Protocol is another narrative for 2025,' which inevitably brings to mind the story of Luna's creator, Virtuals.
Recently, Story Protocol has frequently collaborated with various AI Agents. On December 9, ai16z tweeted that its agent framework ElizaOS will introduce programmable IP. Programmable IP, launched by Story, allows creators to predefine rules to simplify the use of their intellectual property assets, making IP rights combinable and scalable.
On December 17, Story Protocol launched its self-developed Intellectual Property Agent Transaction Control Protocol (ATCP/IP), and will first integrate the following frameworks, including ai16z's Eliza, ZereBro's ZerePay, Crossmint's GOAT 'Great Onchain Agent Toolkit' and Virtuals' G.A.M.E.
The ATCP/IP protocol allows for IP asset trading and authorization between Agents, including training data, algorithms, content creation, and other forms of IP assets, automated contract signing and execution, trustlessness and auditability, cross-legal and on-chain/off-chain compatibility, enabling Agents to comply with certain legal regulations in a decentralized environment, automated payments and profit distribution, multi-agent collaboration and economic networks, promoting cooperation between Agents, such as data sharing, joint training, or cross-agent content creation.
Currently, many AI Agents operate independently like 'islands,' making it difficult for them to exchange and share data with each other. Just as capital efficiency is a core value in the DeFi field, data efficiency is equally crucial in the AI field. If each Agent can freely exchange valuable learning data, strategies, and other information, the scale of the entire market will expand, and efficiency will significantly improve.
Moreover, most AI Agents rely on publicly available data for learning, so the developed Agents are usually just generic types. In the future, if these Agents can form data pools and start trading private data, just as DeFi promotes market development by enhancing capital efficiency, the AI field can also build a richer and more diverse AI ecosystem by improving 'data efficiency.'
The core driving force for Agents to establish connections is value creation and exchange, while the only reason for connections between Agents is to create greater value through collaboration. This value may manifest as complementary computing power, data sharing, or a combination of functions.
The existence of ATCP/IP serves as a bridge between all AI Agents. Regardless of the architecture or chain used in the industry, all AI Agents will be able to trade and collaborate on the ATCP/IP platform. This is akin to the business alliances that exist between companies, adding a layer of leverage outside of each cluster, which will undoubtedly accelerate the development of the entire AI Agent market.
Although Story Protocol's hiring of Luna as a Twitter content intern is an independent event, combined with ATCP/IP, it reflects that the infrastructure construction for the future Agent economy has already begun to take steps.
