Author: Nancy, PANews
With the gradual improvement of infrastructure and the gradual implementation of application scenarios, the crypto AI Agent ecosystem is becoming increasingly prosperous, presenting a new market development trajectory, with liquidity and user participation continuously rising. In this wave of AI Agent enthusiasm, ai16z and Virtuals Protocol are undoubtedly the two most prominent representative projects, attracting various capital eager to capitalize on the opportunity.
ai16z and Virtuals dominate the AI Agent market, contributing over half of the market share.
Although the AI Agent ecosystem has rapidly risen in the cryptocurrency market, attracting significant attention and capital, its market structure still appears singular, primarily relying on a few leading projects for momentum.
According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the overall market value of AI Agents has reached 11.68 billion USD, with an increase of nearly 39.1% in the past 7 days. This growth trend indicates the rapid expansion of the AI Agent ecosystem in the cryptocurrency market.
In terms of ecological scale, the entire crypto AI Agent space exhibits a clear head effect, mainly dominated by the two projects, Virtuals and ai16z. Specifically, the ecological market value of Virtuals has reached 5.01 billion USD, while ai16z stands at 1.63 billion USD, together accounting for 56.8% of the AI Agent market share, with the combined market value of other projects being approximately 170 million USD. This also indicates that the current growth and development of AI Agents rely more on the construction of these two leading projects.
At the same time, in terms of type, the market value of Virtuals exceeds that of customized AI Agents, which stands at 4.67 billion USD, while the cumulative market value of other categories reaches 1.8 billion USD.
From the on-chain distribution perspective, Base and Solana are the two main battlegrounds for AI Agents. Specifically, the market value of AI Agents on Base is approximately 5.76 billion USD, while on Solana it is 5.47 billion USD, together contributing 96.1% of the overall market, with the market value of other on-chain projects totaling only 920 million USD, further indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem is still in its nascent stage.
Although Base and Solana are evenly matched in terms of market size for AI Agents, their ecological compositions differ significantly. The main project in the Base ecosystem is Virtuals, with 86.9% of the projects coming from this ecosystem. In contrast, ai16z occupies nearly one-third of the market share on Solana, indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem on Solana is richer and more diverse compared to Base.
Exhibiting different ecological development paths, but the market concentration is significantly evident in both.
With the rise of Virtuals and ai16z, their ecological projects have also become the focus of attention and bets from market investors.
According to data from daos.fun, as of December 30, the net asset value (NAV) of ai16z is approximately 23.355 million USD, covering over 1,400 tokens. Among these tokens, only 3 have a market value exceeding 1 million USD, namely ELIZA, fxn, and degenai, with a combined market value accounting for 84.3% of the total; there are 6 tokens with asset scales ranging from 100,000 to 1 million USD, while the remaining tokens have market values below 100,000 USD. This distribution indicates that the token composition of ai16z presents a relatively concentrated characteristic, with a few high-value tokens dominating the overall asset scale, while the majority of tokens have a more dispersed market value, reflecting that the ecosystem is still in a highly differentiated state.
Compared to ai16z, the quality of projects in the Virtuals ecosystem is relatively higher, and it has recently been discussed more due to its market value exceeding that of the star AI project Bittensor (TAO). Nevertheless, there is also a certain structural imbalance in the Virtuals ecosystem.
According to the Virtuals official website, as of December 30, there are currently about 510 projects in the Virtuals ecosystem. Among them, there are 4 projects with a market value exceeding 100 million, namely AIXBT, G.A.M.E, Luna, and VaderAI, accounting for 19.2% of the overall ecosystem; there are 99 projects with a market value between 1 million and 100 million USD, while about 60% of the remaining projects have a market value below 100,000 USD. The overall ecosystem projects of Virtuals have gained more market recognition, but there are certain concentration issues in its ecological development.
Regarding the different development paths of AI Agents for ai16z and Virtuals, Web3 independent researcher Haotian previously pointed out that ai16z is more open-source, resembling an 'Android-style' developer ecosystem alliance. However, since the ai16z token is in an extreme state of no token economics, it leads to a lack of a reasonable evaluation model for the entire token bundle, making it impossible to form synergy in the short term. Nevertheless, everything will be resolved after a systematic Tokenomics is established. Meanwhile, each member of the ai16z family is showcasing its own capabilities, with the driving force coming from the developer community. The first thing founder Shaw aims to do is to lead the scattered family to enter a super open-source growth flywheel driven by the technology open-source community.
In a recent interview with PANews, Shaw revealed that ai16z will announce a new token economics proposal around January 1, 2025, including LP pairing mechanisms, DeFi functionality integration, and other content.
Comparison of Virtuals and ai16z, Source: @0xgangWhat
In contrast, Virtuals is relatively closed. Haotian pointed out that Virtuals has adopted an 'Apple-style' ecological expansion route, resembling an AI Agent 'star-making factory'. Due to the well-established token economics of Virtuals in its early stages, users need to stake the VIRTUAL token to create AI Agents, and users must consume VIRTUAL tokens to purchase new AI Agent tokens. Therefore, the more AI Agents issued on Virtuals, the greater the demand for Virtuals tokens, naturally generating a positive growth flywheel effect. However, since Virtuals focuses on being an asset issuance platform and provides a standard AI Agent framework, it leads to a considerable homogenization of AI Agents on the platform. The nature of Virtuals' asset issuance and light technological ecological breakthroughs also reflects the inherent limitations of a closed ecosystem.
From pure MEME to on-chain applications, AI Agents are innovating the market operation model.
The hype surrounding Virtuals and ai16z reflects an increased focus on AI Agents, as well as an important manifestation of the evolution of MEME.
"AI is the biggest main theme of human technology and productivity enhancement in the next 20 years, and it can be integrated into all categories of Crypto, including DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and Desci, etc. During the rapid enhancement period, a large number of new applications and technologies will emerge, all of which can be applied in Crypto." Crypto KOL 0xWizard believes that new targets combining AI may recreate an on-chain asset market value, or even recreate an overall cryptocurrency market value.
"From the initial pure MEME like GOAT, to chat-capable AI Agents, then to on-chain funds like ai16z, and finally to new asset issuance platforms like Virtual and Spore, each step is getting closer to application. The essence of this on-chain market trend is that new 'application projects' bypass exchanges and VCs, directly realizing interest redistribution through the on-chain issuance of new assets. At the same time, project parties do not need to flatter VCs, compete for resources, and pay tolls to exchanges, but can directly take them out to 'stroll' on-chain to see if the market is willing to buy in." pointed out by Crypto KOL @Michael_Liu93.
Haotian also believes that the environment has changed, and the logic of capturing market value is also changing, mainly reflected in the following points: (1) moving from a lot of infrastructure stacking that is detached from market demand to using AI Agent applications to verify market demand; (2) previous VC rounds of financing have led to increasingly limited secondary profit space, whereas now projects can be built in the form of open-source Public Goods that can directly target secondary market financing, allowing AI Agents to manage assets autonomously, creating greater imaginative space for projects; (3) past methods such as airdrops to acquire early users and traffic have brought subsequent operational pressure, while launching in a MEME-style secondary manner can fit with continuously growing Tokenomics (LP fees, transaction taxes, reserve share releases, etc.); (4) gradually moving towards DEX as the main venue after breaking the CEX listing end, high-quality projects have a greater probability of achieving a grassroots resurgence; (5) realizing new market operation rules, projects that do not integrate with the community and are not consistently focused on products will find it difficult to emerge in the market and ecosystem.
