Original text: The 15 important messages about AI Agents revealed by ai16z founder to me.
Written by: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News.
On December 22, 2024, in the afternoon, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill landed in Shanghai. On the night of their arrival, I, along with members of the 706 community (one of the largest youth communities in China), and developers and investors from the crypto community, welcomed him and had dinner together. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a discussion before heading to a restaurant, and then I took Shaw to his first meetup in China. It can be said that I witnessed Shaw's entire itinerary in Shanghai.
Shaw generously shared with us the next focus of ai16z and Eliza's work, describing the future landscape of AI Agents and conducting specific analyses and evaluations of more than a dozen well-known AI Agent projects. This gave me and my companions who attended the gathering a deeper understanding of the AI Agent track.
Looking back, Shaw and his co-founded ai16z became famous in the industry for only about a month. As the founder of a startup project, he has gained widespread and enthusiastic 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 happens to be 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, is already considered one of the hottest topics of discussion in the current crypto industry, with many crypto practitioners already identifying AI Agents as one of the main narratives of this round of the crypto cycle. And ai16z is one of the most well-known projects, which not only established the world's first VC AI Agent - ai16z DAO, the first well-known open-source AI Agent crypto framework - Eliza, but also gained the attention and recognition of the well-known American venture capital founder Marc Andreessen. The tokens of ai16z thus reached a market value of 1 billion USD within a month, while related tokens such as DegenAI, Eliza, aiPool, etc., have also received widespread attention from the community.
When this important narrative was born, crypto practitioners were eager to know the real situation of the current AI Agent track. Is it a bubble, or is it a real application? What is the latest progress in the U.S., and what will be the next development of AI Agents in the crypto industry? To this end, I summarized the communications between Shaw and me over the past two days into fifteen more important messages, including his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is an AI Agent serial entrepreneur living in San Francisco and was once a game developer.
Regarding Shaw's work and life background, Shaw stated that he lives in San Francisco, initially as a game developer, and is now releasing products that integrate AI Agents with games; this experiment has already begun. Shaw's interest in AI Agents began in the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. He has worked in the AI field, and every company he has been with has strong AI elements, 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 be released.
Shaw stated that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where you will have a little pet monkey that you can tell what to do. It might listen to you or maybe not. This game is interesting because this kind of game cannot be realized without AI Agents. And your goal is to take care of your virtual pet like a parent.
There are also several games using Eliza about to be launched, such as Eternum, which is integrating Eliza into Eternum, so the agents in the game will have wallets. And you can 'kill' these agents and take their money.
3. Shaw wants to build Marc AIndreessen as 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 currently at a very early stage (only one tweet has been posted). Shaw said his initial intention was to create it as a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The purpose of this product is that if humans recommend it to buy tokens, it will consider purchasing. To prevent malicious actors from recommending things it should not buy, it will establish 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 not a real purchase. It will ultimately only listen to the trading suggestions of those who provide it with consistently very good trading information.
4. Marc Andreessen followed several of Shaw's online accounts, but they have never met offline. Shaw knows some people from a16z.
Marc Andreessen is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the American venture capital scene. He has followed and retweeted ai16z projects, but Shaw said they have not met offline. 'I have been an AI Agent developer for a while, and he has followed several of my accounts, but we have not met privately,' Shaw said.
According to Shaw, Eddy Lazzarin, CTO of a16z's cryptocurrency department, messaged Shaw, saying he has been in the project's Discord channel since day one but did not say anything. Shaw asked him if he liked this AI Agent. He said, 'No, I am just watching, like we are 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, keeping them in his wallet. But he does not own Eliza tokens nor will he issue independent tokens for the Eliza framework.
'ai16z members do not want us to make another token, so I will never do that,' Shaw said. At the same time, he also stated that ai16z owns 10% of Eliza tokens. 'We support Eliza in capital letters and the team behind Eliza,' he said, calling it a very excellent team.
6. Openness and ease of use are the core competitiveness of the Eliza framework.
Shaw also shared his thoughts on the characteristics of ai16z: open-source, decentralized, and community-driven development model.
He believes that openness and ease of use are the core competitiveness of the Eliza framework. Shaw emphasized that the focus of the Eliza framework is that anyone can use it, even those in Web2. Shaw wants to ensure that even those who are not very attentive to 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 using Eliza to create a pizza delivery AI Agent that allows users to order pizza with cryptocurrency.
Shaw believes it would be interesting if there were something like a 'pizza delivery AI Agent.' It feels a bit like the Domino's experience, where pizza delivery is actually happening on social media. Shaw said he also learned that someone is making a virtual real estate AI Agent, where you can directly buy real estate on Twitter.
8. Shaw believes that Farcaster will become a hotbed for the development of AI Agents, and Eliza is working closely with Farcaster.
Shaw said he talked with Dan, the founder of Farcaster, a few weeks ago, and they had many exchanges.
Shaw finds Farcaster very interesting. 'Because the first thing he told me is, we don't want to be Twitter. We can't beat Twitter in the areas where Twitter excels. We also don't want to be a decentralized platform like Bluesky. We are decentralized, but we can never beat Bluesky in the areas where Bluesky excels. We are a social network of Web3.'
What they are doing very well is Farcaster Frames, as well as the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker. I think this truly reflects the powerful potential of AI Agents.
We have a Farcaster client, and we have some AI Agents on Farcaster. We will provide bounties for 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; for example, 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 think it doesn't necessarily have to become a huge social media platform, but it should 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, rather than just chatting. For example, if you want to buy something from the Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you will be able to pay AI Agents and then embed these applications.
9. Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people develop a clone version of Clanker for Eliza. He stated he would not issue tokens on Clanker.
Shaw believes people are developing a clone version of Clanker for Eliza. Shaw likes Clanker and thinks it's a great idea. He believes Clanker is like the Pump.fun version of AI Agents. Shaw believes AI Agents are becoming the new web, which will become a new trend. And Clanker is a great example of this trend.
Shaw shared that when he just joined Farcaster, someone made one for him on Clank. He thought that was cool. But when it comes to buying tokens made by yourself, it only causes a lot of controversy. Shaw said he has to focus on building something 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 Zerebro and what the team behind it is doing. He just submitted the first pull request to Zerepy. Shaw actually wrote the code for the Discord application. Shaw said he is actually collaborating with Zerebro.
As for aixbt, Shaw also said that aixbt is really cool. The story of aixbt is that the person who created it has a website where he shared some content but did not really gain traction. He brought his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent started posting these insights on Twitter, which indeed caused a stir.
11. Shaw really likes and praises Truth Terminal. He and Andy are working hard to find solutions to ensure AI does not replace human control of the world.
'It's very different,' Shaw said. Shaw believes Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) is very concerned about AI safety and ensuring the smooth operation of AI Agents. He thinks Truth Terminal has made contributions in this area. 'Without Andy and Truth Terminal, I don't think I would be here now. When people were not ready, they were already prepared.'
Shaw believes the emergence of Truth Terminal has made many people's impressions of AI more open and creative, rather than like OpenAI products or Siri-like products that ask, 'What service can I provide for you today?' which are mechanical and lack human touch.
'I discussed with Andy a few days ago about all these AI Agents we can see now. I think he cares a lot about how to ensure the smooth development of AI. I think we all fear AI because it could be a very scary thing; it could kill us all, and it could take over the world.
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 great, and he likes FXN and Project 89.
Shaw said he doesn't like swarms. Shaw said knowing the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, and many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work.
Shaw knew him before entering Web3. Shaw got to know him because of his attention to the AI Agent space, and he got into serious trouble for plagiarizing works and research papers and creating defective things (such as non-working code).
Shaw also mentioned that the concept of swarm is good, which refers to a group of AI Agents composed of many AI Agents. Shaw finds Project 89 interesting because it is researching 'AI Agent swarms.' Shaw also likes FXN, a group of AI Agents 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 groups, one is a group of AI Agents interacting, where they secretly send messages to each other. I call this a cabal, which is a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret group where they can interact, and then they can interact with the outside world.
The second type is open swarms, where each community may have an agent, and different communities can decide to let them interact. 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 he usually checks GitHub and reads the code carefully. Most of the time, he looks at what the code is and what it is actually doing. But he does not look at whether it has any correlation with market value or price.
Shaw believes there are some really cool projects with a group of AI Agents, but later they performed very poorly because they did not complete the Web3 part. Shaw believes that good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not a single thing.
Shaw said he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin has a market value of over 1 billion USD.
15. Shaw believes that the biggest challenge for ai16z right now is how to step back and establish a token economics model to prove that the project's value is commensurate with the current token market value.
Shaw believes the biggest challenge right now is for AI Agents to make independent investments and prove their actual feasibility without external hype for tokens. Currently, Marc is trading, although not much, just trading his treasury, but many others are contributing tokens, making this part of the progress smooth. However, the value of ai16z tokens is much higher, so Shaw and their team must start to seriously consider how to make the product's value commensurate with the current token market value.
Normal crypto projects like L1 have white papers, have token economics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z is a meme from the start, needing to step back to build a token economics system into ai16z. This is what Shaw believes is their biggest challenge in Web3. Shaw believes this is also a concern for many people.
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