Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
On December 22, 2024, in the afternoon, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill landed in Shanghai. That evening, I and members of the 706 community (one of the largest youth communities in China), along with developers and investors from the crypto community, welcomed him and had dinner together. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a conversation before we went to a restaurant, and then I took Shaw to his first meetup venue in China. I can say I witnessed Shaw's journey in Shanghai quite completely.
Shaw generously shared with us the next focus of ai16z and Eliza's work, described the future landscape of AI Agents, and provided detailed analysis and evaluation of several well-known AI Agent projects. This gave me and my companions attending the gathering a deeper understanding of the AI Agent space.
Looking back, Shaw and the ai16z he founded have only been famous in the industry for about a month. As the founder of a startup project, he has gained widespread and eager attention from many investors, developers, and media in the crypto industry. Why is this? I think it may be related to the explosive trend of AI Agents in the crypto industry, and ai16z is precisely one of the core projects leading this wave of AI Agent meme narrative.
The narrative of crypto AI Agents, although it has only started for a month, 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 regard. This project not only established the world's first VC AI Agent - ai16z DAO, but also the first well-known open-source AI Agent crypto framework - Eliza, and has gained the attention and recognition of Marc Andreessen, the founder of the well-known American venture capital firm a16z. Consequently, ai16z's token reached a market value of $1 billion within a month, and related tokens such as DegenAI, Eliza, and aiPool have also received widespread attention from the community.
As this important narrative was born, crypto practitioners were eager to know the real situation of the current AI Agent space. Is it a bubble or real application? What is the latest progress in the United States, and what will the next development of AI Agents in the crypto industry look like? To this end, I summarized fifteen important pieces of information from the exchanges between Shaw and me over these two days, including his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is a serial entrepreneur in AI Agents living in San Francisco, and he was also 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 interest in AI Agents started during the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. Shaw has worked in the AI field, and every company he has been with has a strong AI element, including developing AI Agent platforms and AI Agents in 3D worlds. Shaw has also founded several AI-related companies, but the early projects did not achieve widespread success.
2. Shaw stated that several games based on the Eliza framework are about to launch.
Shaw mentioned that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where you will have a pet monkey that you can instruct on what to do. It may listen to you, or maybe it won't. The game is interesting because this kind of game would not be possible without AI Agents. Your goal is to care for your virtual pet like a parent.
Several games using Eliza are set to launch soon, such as Eternum, which is integrating Eliza so that the agents in the game will have wallets. You can 'kill' these agents and take their money.
3. Shaw wants to develop Marc AIndreessen into 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 still in a very early stage (only one tweet has been made). Shaw said his intention was to create it as a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The function of this product is that if humans recommend it to purchase tokens, it will consider purchasing. To prevent malicious actors from recommending things it should not buy, it will build a trust mechanism called 'trust market.' The idea of the trust mechanism is that if you recommend good tokens, it will place virtual orders for everyone but will not actually purchase. It ultimately only listens to the trading suggestions of those who provide it with consistently 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 American venture capital, and he has followed and retweeted ai16z projects, but Shaw stated they have not met offline. 'I have been an AI Agent developer for a while, he has followed a few of my accounts, but we have not met privately,' Shaw said.
According to Shaw, Eddy Lazzarin, the CTO of the a16z cryptocurrency department, messaged Shaw saying he had been in the project's Discord channel since day one but said nothing. Shaw asked him if he liked this AI Agent. He said no, I was just watching, like we were monitoring you.
5. Shaw stated that 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, nor will he 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 also stated that ai16z holds 10% of Eliza tokens. We support the uppercase Eliza and the team behind Eliza; he said it's an excellent team.
6. Openness and ease of use are the core competitive advantages of the Eliza framework.
Shaw also shared the characteristics of ai16z in his mind: open source, decentralized, and community-driven development model.
He believes openness and ease of use are the core competitive advantages of the Eliza framework. Shaw emphasizes that the focus of the Eliza framework is that anyone can use it, even those from Web2. Shaw wants to ensure that even those who are not very concerned about Web3 can feel satisfied.
Taken at 706 Shanghai Youth Space - Dweller
7. Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms like 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 using cryptocurrency.
Shaw thinks it would be interesting to have something like a 'pizza delivery AI Agent.' It's a bit like the Domino's experience where pizza delivery is actually happening on social media. Shaw said he also learned that someone is creating a virtual real estate AI Agent, where you can directly purchase real estate on Twitter.
8. Shaw believes Farcaster will become a hotbed for the development of AI Agents, and Eliza is deeply collaborating with Farcaster.
Shaw said he talked with Farcaster founder Dan a few weeks ago and had a lot of communications.
Shaw thinks Farcaster is very interesting. 'Because the first thing it told me is that we don't want to be Twitter; we can't beat Twitter at what it excels at, and we don’t want to be a decentralized platform like Bluesky. We are decentralized, but we will never beat Bluesky at what it excels at; we are a social network for Web3,' Shaw said.
What they do very well is Farcaster Frames and the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker. I think this truly reflects the potentially powerful field 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 my feeling is that when AI Agents enter social media applications, they become very interesting, and then you can interact with them, like you can buy things, you can trade. I think Farcaster is like an AI Agent marketplace where you can get different services, and you can embed payments and all these things.
So I really think Farcaster is a very interesting thing. I don't think it necessarily needs to become a huge social media platform but rather become 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 instead of just chatting. For example, if you want to buy something from an Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you'll be able to pay AI Agents and then be able to embed these applications.
9. Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people develop a clone of Clanker for Eliza. He stated that he will not issue tokens on Clanker.
Shaw thinks people are developing a clone of Clanker for Eliza. He likes Clanker and thinks it’s a great idea. He believes Clanker is like the Pump.fun version of an AI Agent. Shaw believes AI Agents are becoming the new web, which will become a new trend. Clanker is a great example of this trend.
Shaw shared that when he first joined Farcaster, someone made one for him on Clank. He thought that was cool. But when it comes to buying tokens that you made yourself, 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 indeed collaborating with Zerebro.
As for aixbt, Shaw also said aixbt is really cool. The story of aixbt is that the creator had a website and shared some content but didn't really gain traction. He brought his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent started posting these insights on Twitter, which did indeed create a stir.
11. Shaw really likes and admires Truth Terminal, and he and Andy are working hard to find solutions where AI does not replace humans in controlling the world.
'It's very different,' Shaw said. Shaw believes Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) is very concerned about AI safety and ensuring AI Agents operate smoothly. He believes Truth Terminal contributes to this. 'If it weren't for Andy and Truth Terminal, I wouldn't be here now; when people were not ready, they were already prepared.'
Shaw believes that the emergence of Truth Terminal has made many people more open and creative about AI, rather than having a mechanical and impersonal feel like products from OpenAI or Siri that ask, 'What service can I provide for you today?'
'I discussed all these AI Agents we can see now with Andy a few days ago. I think he is very concerned about how to ensure the smooth development of AI. I think we are both afraid of AI because it could 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.
Taken at 706 Shanghai Youth Space - Dweller
12. Shaw said the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, but he believes the concept of 'AI Agent swarm' is excellent, and he likes FXN and Project 89.
Shaw said he does not like swarms. Shaw said he knows the creator of the swarms token, who is a very famous scammer, and many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work.
Shaw knew him before entering Web3. Shaw met him because he was following the AI Agent space; he got into serious trouble for plagiarism of works and research papers and for making defective things (like non-functional code).
Shaw also stated that the concept of swarm is excellent, that is, an AI Agent swarm composed of many AI Agents. Shaw thinks Project 89 is interesting because this project is studying 'AI Agent swarms.' Shaw also likes FXN, an AI Agent swarm with ten AI Agents.
13. Shaw believes 'AI Agent swarm' 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 swarms, one is a group where AI Agents interact with each other, such as secretly sending messages to each other. I call this a cabal, which is a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret society where they can interact and then interact with the outside world.
The second type is open groups, where each community may have an agent, and different communities can decide to let them interact with each other. This is also the technology we are researching.
14. Shaw shared from a developer's perspective how he finds early excellent AI Agent projects.
Shaw said he is a developer and typically checks GitHub and reads code carefully. Most of the time, he looks at what the code is and what it is actually doing, but he does not check if it has any correlation with market value or price.
Shaw believes some very cool projects have a group of AI Agents, but later they performed very poorly because they did not complete the Web3 part. Shaw thinks good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not the same thing.
Shaw said he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin has a market value of over $1 billion.
15. Shaw believes the biggest challenge for ai16z right now is how to step back and build a token economics model to prove the project's value matches the current token market value.
Shaw believes the biggest challenge right now is for AI Agents to make autonomous investments and prove their practical viability without external hype around tokens. Currently, Marc is trading, although not much, just trading his treasury, but many others are contributing tokens, making this part of the progress go smoothly. However, the value of the ai16z token is much higher, so Shaw and their team must seriously consider how to align the product's value with the current token market value.
Normal crypto projects like L1 have white papers, token economics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z started as a meme, having to backtrack to build token economics into the ai16z system. This is the biggest challenge Shaw believes they face in Web3. Shaw also thinks this is a concern for many people.
