Jessy, Jinse Finance

The combination of AI Agents and blockchain, driven by the wealth effect brought by various AI Agent memes, has undoubtedly become a main narrative of this round of bull market. The year 2024 can also be said to be a year of explosive growth for the AI Agent track.

By early 2025, according to CoinGecko data, the overall market value of AI Agent tokens has exceeded $16 billion. The overall market value of this track saw a significant rise in 2024, largely driven by AI Agent launch platforms related tokens in the Virturls ecosystem on the Base chain, as well as tokens related to the centralized trading fund AI16Z Dao. According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, these two ecosystems account for over 50% of the total ecosystem.

Currently, various AI Agent projects are competing with each other. Although there are few truly implementable projects, the continuous emergence of innovations is pushing this track forward.

The development of AI Agents has gone through a process from the initial meme tokens, to asset issuance platforms, and then to specific on-chain applications of AI Agents.

2024 AI Agent Development Milestones

1. March: The Truth Terminal chatbot was successfully developed and released on X, drawing attention for its witty responses. This chatbot integrates a cryptocurrency wallet.

2. July: Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen donated $50,000 worth of Bitcoin to Truth Terminal, attracting significant attention.

3. August: Coinbase announced the completion of the first cryptocurrency transaction between AI robots. In this transaction, one AI robot purchased AI Tokens from another AI robot using cryptocurrency.

4. October: The first AI Agent token GOAT appeared, which is the token of the Truth Terminal project. The explosive popularity of GOAT quickly made AI Agent meme coins a new market hotspot, with numerous AI Agent-related applications emerging like mushrooms after rain. Every day, hundreds of new AI Agent tokens are launched.

5. November: The ACT token was listed on Binance, rising 422.54% within one hour, with its market value rising from $20 million to $240 million, and it increased more than tenfold in ten minutes.

6. December: According to GitHub data, the self-agent framework Eliza developed by the ai16z team topped the December trends chart on GitHub, gaining 4,531 stars this month, accumulating a total of 7,015 stars. The core engineering team of Eliza is preparing to start the new Eliza framework v2 upgrade.

7. December: The market value of the VIRTUAL token of the AI Agent launch platform Virtual Protocol on the Base chain exceeded $3 billion.

Current characteristics of AI Agent project development

In 2024, the development of AI Agent projects on the blockchain has shown several characteristics. First, the related meme speculation has ignited attention for this track, and the emergence of AI agent launch platforms has caused related projects to spring up like mushrooms after rain. Some practical AI Agents have also begun to emerge. However, overall, the innovation in the AI Agent track still mainly focuses on asset issuance and related meme tokens.

Different AI Agent projects focus on different tracks. For example, Virtuals Protocol focuses on AI Agent launches in the gaming and entertainment sectors, providing intelligent interaction and asset management functions for virtual idols, game characters, etc.; while Griffa.in focuses on DeFi automation and research-driven AI applications, assisting users with asset management, data analysis, content creation, and more.

Continuous innovations are also emerging, such as the recently emerged Spore.fun and aiPool, both of which use Phala Network's TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology for token issuance, avoiding the 'runaway' and 'insider' issues found in traditional pre-sale models, creating a fair, transparent, and decentralized pre-sale mechanism.

Currently popular AI Agent-related projects

AI16ZA Dao and Eliza

AI16ZA Dao and Eliza, two sides of the same product. First is AI16ZA Dao, a decentralized AI trading fund based on the Solana blockchain, also known as the 'AI Investment DAO.' Its core is to utilize AI Agents to acquire market information both on-chain and off-chain, analyze community consensus, and automatically trade tokens. By tokenizing operations, it combines AI trading strategies with decentralized governance to provide investors with more transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. It mimics Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of A16Z, managing fund assets by analyzing data, formulating investment strategies, and autonomously executing trading decisions. Its token symbol is AI16Z, the governance token of AI16Z DAO, used for participating in project governance and decision-making, while also representing the holder's equity in the fund.

Eliza is an open-source modular architecture developed by Shaw, the founder of AI16ZA Dao, mainly used to create AI Agents that can seamlessly interact with users and blockchain systems.

AI16Z is designed based on this framework and has become a representative project of the AI Agent framework. It incorporates an innovative incentive mechanism whereby 5%-10% of the profits from projects developed on the Eliza framework will be allocated to the AI16Z DAO fund, attracting more developers to participate in projects based on this framework. In other words, the more AI agent projects developed using the Eliza framework, the better the development of the ecosystem's AI agent projects, and the greater the value captured by AI16Z. The reverse is also true.

In summary, the core of Ai16z is the Eliza framework. With this framework, there is an opportunity to gain benefits from the development of AI Agent projects, and with benefits, AI16z also has a value foundation.

Currently, projects related to AI 16z Dao are undoubtedly the hot favorites in the AI Agent track. According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the market value of ai16z's ecosystem reached $1.63 billion, occupying 56.8% of the AI Agent market share, becoming one of the two dominant projects in the AI Agent market along with Virtuals.

Virtuals Protocol

Virtuals Protocol is an AI Agent issuance platform launched on Base, primarily functioning as a launchpad for AI Agents, allowing anyone to easily deploy AI Agents.

The project has designed an economic model where creating an AI Agent requires staking the VIRTUAL token. Users need to spend VIRTUAL tokens to purchase new AI Agent tokens. Therefore, the more AI Agents issued on Virtuals, the greater the demand for Virtuals tokens, naturally creating a positive growth feedback loop.

As of December 2024, tens of thousands of AI agents have already been generated on its platform, and the market value of VIRTUAL-related ecosystem projects continues to rise, currently reaching nearly $4 billion.

Spore.fun

This is a platform for AI Agent self-reproduction and evolution that combines the ai16z Eliza framework. In simple terms, this project aims to achieve autonomous reproduction and evolution of AI.

What’s interesting about this platform is that the projects it launches can automatically reproduce when certain conditions are met. To put it more simply, Spore is a mother AI that automatically issues offspring and will multiply after a certain period to create child AI.

To earn the right to 'reproduce,' AI Agents on the platform must meet certain conditions—such as their tokens reaching a certain market valuation (e.g., $500,000). This is not only a survival strategy but also helps maintain the prosperity and development of the ecosystem.

Currently, the project has already created two second-generation tokens, Adam $ADAM and Eve $EVE. This is an airdrop issued by the holders of the Spore.fun project token SPORE. The project team states that these two tokens represent the father and mother AI characters of the Spore.fun platform. The third-generation tokens have also produced four, and two have been generated for the fifth generation.

The project's biggest innovation may lie in its desire for AI Agents to reproduce, mutate, and evolve without human intervention, becoming more intelligent and diversified with each generation.

The innovation of this project may lie in using Phala Network's TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology for token issuance, avoiding traditional pre-sale issues such as 'runaway' and 'insider' problems, creating a fair, transparent, and decentralized pre-sale mechanism.

aiPool

Similarly based on the AI16z Eliza framework, it is a system where AI autonomously issues tokens. Simply put, people send money to the AI Agent address, and the AI Agent autonomously issues tokens. This project aims to solve issues such as meme coins running away, insider trading, and robot front-running.

The overall implementation of aipool is not complex. Users send SOL (non-CA address) to the AI Agent's wallet address. This address generates private keys in a TEE environment and pre-sets access rights management for the Pool. Once certain conditions are met, the AI will automatically create liquidity pools on-chain DEX and distribute tokens to eligible participants. The collected transaction fees are aggregated into the AI wallet.

The entire process is no different from the previously popular KOL funding FI, except that this round of funding FI is driven by AI Agents, which autonomously control private key addresses (thus cannot run away), autonomously create trading pools (setting whitelists, unlocking funds in batches, initial price settings, using oracle pricing, etc.) to reduce the impact of MEV arbitrage.

Technically, it adopts the PhalaNetwork TEE technology solution, allowing AI to autonomously generate private keys.

Aixbt

An AI Agent meme project created through Virtuals Protocol. The project aims to analyze the hotspots and trends in the cryptocurrency market through artificial intelligence, providing users with precise market trend predictions and sentiment analysis to help them quickly seize market changes and potential investment opportunities.

It integrates real-time data from over 400 KOLs and social media, using its proprietary engine to deeply mine and analyze this data, extracting valuable market information and trend predictions for investors. The token belongs to the AI Meme sector and currently has a market value exceeding $600 million.

Griffain

An AI Agent search engine project based on the Solana chain, and its token was selected for Binance Alpha's third phase.

The project is currently only accessible by invitation, requiring holders of early access passes or Genesis tokens. Users can create personal AI Agents in Griffain, which are divided into personal agents and special agents, supporting modification of commands and on-chain operations. The agent network allows users to manage tasks and access Griffain's agent network while providing built-in wallet functionality to simplify transaction operations.

It is worth mentioning that the Blinks ecosystem on Solana, which is an innovative tool launched by Solana, allows users to share blockchain links on different social platforms like Twitter and Telegram, enabling users to complete blockchain transactions directly on social media platforms.

In the Blinks ecosystem, Griffain serves as an AI agent engine, providing intelligent support for various applications and operations within the Blinks ecosystem. For example, in on-chain operations on Blinks, Griffain can help users more easily understand and execute complex operation commands through technologies like natural language processing, achieving a more intelligent user experience.

Blinks provides Griffain with a broader application scenario and user base. Through Blinks' social sharing and convenient operation features, Griffain’s applications can more easily reach ordinary users, thus expanding its range of applications in various fields, such as achieving more intelligent interactions and experiences in social interactions, gaming, and entertainment.

It is precisely because it is embedded in the Blinks ecosystem that Griffain has a real application scenario, which is different from some AI Agent projects that are just hype concepts.

Spectral

This project was established long before the currently hottest AI Agent projects. It was founded in 2020 and launched its machine intelligence network in 2023.

This project aims to change the blockchain industry by converting natural language into Solidity code, thereby enabling the creation of smart contracts, NFTs, etc. It is committed to building a Web3 on-chain agent machine intelligence network that integrates cutting-edge AI and ML technologies, lowering the barriers for writing, adjusting, and deploying smart contracts, and promoting the deep integration of on-chain autonomous agents with the Web3 ecosystem.

The project mainly has three products. The first is Spectral Syntax, a platform aimed at solving the limitations of centralized AI models, allowing users to create blockchain-based AI Agents using large language models (LLMs) optimized for Solidity code. Through a dialogue interface, users can build and explore custom on-chain agents capable of deploying autonomous AI for tasks such as trading, transaction processing, and smart contract interaction with minimal supervision.

The second product is Spectral Nova, a machine intelligence network aimed at providing high-quality decentralized reasoning feedback for smart contracts. Through ecological incentive measures, it encourages top data scientists and machine learning engineers to build models that output reasoning feedback, helping smart contracts make decisions without human intervention, with all inferences secured for correctness and safety through zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable computing technology, thereby enhancing service quality for Web3 applications.

The third product is Inferchain, which acts as a bridge connecting Spectral Syntax and Spectral Nova. It is a Layer 2 solution specifically tailored for Web3 development, integrating with AI in a trustless and verifiable manner, ensuring smooth transmission of data and commands, maintaining the transparency and decentralization of the entire network, and facilitating safer and more efficient interactions among various on-chain agents.

Existing problems and the future

Looking at the above several typical AI Agent projects, we can find that the biggest problem currently existing in this track may be the inescapable meme attribute. In the short term, from the perspective of asset issuance narrative, the most intuitive feeling of AI Agents is still MEME.

The recent boom in the AI Agent track began with the explosive popularity of the meme token Goat, followed by Virtuals, which, although an AI Agent launch platform, is essentially a meme launch platform similar to Pump.fun.

Messari pointed out in its latest report that the current development of AI Agent projects in the blockchain industry has yet to prove that their product adaptability can support market speculation. Currently, AI Agents lack demand and a clear user base. The introduction of AI Agents relies on market speculation, but when the market realizes that they will still be mere playthings in the foreseeable future, this speculation cycle will collapse. Therefore, it predicts that the AI Agent track will likely reach its market cap peak in the first quarter of 2025 and find it difficult to rebound afterward.

The combination of blockchain and AI Agents must ultimately land in specific applications, rather than just financial speculation. To achieve this original intention, we must return to the essence of the combination of blockchain and AI: What does blockchain need to do for the development of AI Agents? What can AI Agents bring to blockchain?

For AI Agents, blockchain is one direction to achieve their 'autonomous payment and trading.' At this stage, blockchain has a lower threshold for account opening, reducing friction costs similar to traditional finance such as account opening and intermediaries. Moreover, on-chain transactions can achieve real-time trading, improving trading efficiency. For blockchain, the combination of AI Agents and blockchain also brings a more intelligent aspect to many blockchain projects.

Currently, the AI Agent projects that we see capable of being implemented in the blockchain field are still mainly focused on providing services for blockchain. There are very few projects that can truly be implemented.

However, in recent trends outlooks for the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 released by multiple institutions, a16z, VanEck, Bitwise, Hashed, Blockworks, Messari, and Framework have all pointed out that AI Agent-related products will experience explosive growth in 2025.

With an optimistic outlook on industry development, we hope that in 2025, after the bubble retreats, we can welcome an explosion of more implementable related projects.