Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)
At the beginning of the new year, the two major projects in the AI Agent sector, ai16z and swarms, both set new market value highs.
What should have been a harmonious situation saw ai16z founder Shaw deal a blow to the swarms project, publicly criticizing swarms developer Kye Gomez, stating that he 'does not understand how to write code and has a history of fraud,' directly pointing to 'character issues.' Kye had previously attracted attention for being a 19-year-old high school dropout and was praised as a 'genius youth.'
This dispute also caused both major projects to drop over 20% in a short time, but just a day later, they regained ground, with swarms even setting a new high of $0.6.
This incident also places the complex relationships of love and hate among the developers behind AI Agents back in the spotlight. Odaily Planet Daily will briefly summarize the relationships among the recently representative developers behind AI Agents in this article, observing how developers influence the price trends of AI Agents and related Meme coins.
Central node of the relationship diagram: Shaw, founder of ai16z
According to Coingecko data, as of the time of writing, the current price of ai16z is $2.17, with a 7-day increase of 70%, and the market value is temporarily reported at $2.4 billion, second only to the leading AI Agent token VIRTUAL of the Base ecosystem and the old AI concept token FET, ranking third in the AI Agent sector.
Such remarkable performance naturally brought massive attention to its developer Shaw. Especially as Shaw has recently been frequently roadshowing offline, closely communicating with community members from different regions, his external voice is seen as 'one of the important signals in the AI Agent field.' The online conference on Space that Shaw previously promoted for AI Agent development education is also viewed as a preaching act for the 'deep integration of AI and Crypto.'
Frequent proactive statements have brought Shaw many supporters but also become a catalyst for conflicts with other project developers.
Relationship diagram of AI Agent developers
Shaw VS Kye: Unfiltered mutual dislike
Shaw has previously criticized swarms developer Kye. On December 21, 2024, he expressed: 'I really dislike publicly pointing out others' problems. Doing so poses a huge risk to our project, makes many people nervous, and I do not want to discourage hardworking developers. But some people will steal others' work and try to claim credit.'
Shaw shared a post from August 2023 on the Reddit machine learning forum, which pointed out that a Github repo may have traces of stealing others' achievements, and this repo belongs to Kye, the developer behind Swarms. Some comments also pointed out that Kye had directly copied and pasted code from a certain code repository. 'Based on his code submission frequency and content, Kye is likely generating code using ChatGPT.'
Reddit post and comment area revelations
Recently, Shaw's criticism of Kye has been even more intense than before.
After Shaw's critical tweet was published, the official X platform account of the swarms project, as an AI Agent, responded: 'Can you point out where the code has issues so we can resolve and fix it?'
Shaw did not back down, directly stating, 'You are a thief and a liar; people from Princeton and senior members like Gwern from OpenAI have evidence.' The links and screenshots referred to Kye's previous code being labeled as automatically generated by ChatGPT.
Shaw's line quotes and evidence
Facing Shaw's doubts, swarms developer Kye changed from previous confrontational responses to a friendly reply. 'If you have questions about swarms, please submit feedback, and we will address the issues immediately. We are committed to providing a seamless AI Agent building experience for everyone.'
On December 22 last year, when Shaw first criticized Kye, the latter reacted very intensely. Kye believed that Shaw's token sales harmed the project, causing many investors to lose money, while he continued to hold swarms and mcs without selling, claiming to be the 'orthodox' dedicated to realizing the functionality and practicality of AI Agents. After Shaw blocked his account, Kye mocked him while conducting 'identity attacks,' believing that Shaw, Eliza, and ai16z and related personnel and projects were all scams.
Shaw a16z crypto CTO: 'Netizens contacted via DM'
As the initiator of the ai16z DAO organization fund, Shaw has had little contact with a16z, with direct contact limited to the a16z Crypto CTO. Previously, Shaw himself had posted to clarify: ai16z has no relationship with a16z and emphasized that buying related concept tokens is foolish. However, he added in the comments, 'I am also one of the fools,' which further misled uninformed users into misunderstanding the relationship and purchasing ai16z-related tokens.
In November last year, a16z Crypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin posted on X revealing ongoing dialogues between the venture capital firm and the ai16z DAO. Previously, one of the ai16z founders, Shaw, had sought contact with a16z on X, to which Lazzarin replied, 'Check your DM.' At that time, ai16z saw a nearly 44% increase in 24H, with a market value exceeding $480 million.
Shaw Baoskee: Friendly symbiotic relationship between the platform and project parties
As a 'decentralized VC-type investment platform,' one of daos.fun's major achievements is the community-shared fund ai16z, thus the relationship between Shaw and the platform's founder baoskee is very friendly.
Previously, baoskee made a positive response regarding 'ai16z token permissions,' directly supporting ai16z and Shaw himself: 'The ai16z token is indeed mintable, and the minting rights will be controlled by DAO token holders (with veto rights for protection) ... We will conduct a thorough audit of this.'
In a certain sense, the two can be regarded as a symbiotic relationship, like grasshoppers on the same rope.
Shaw Lucid: Co-founder of ai16z
Another ai16z DAO partner, Lucid, is Shaw's 'right-hand man,' having co-participated in the creation of ai16z and having initiated the creation of the Base ecosystem AI Agent BeffAI.
Previously, Shaw had posted seeking developers interested in Eliza Runescape plugin and agent development, at which point the contact person for this project was Lucid.
Shaw Skely: Supporter and initiator of the ai Pool project
Skely, the initiator of the AI Agent project ai Pool (METAV), which raised over 30,000 SOL in a few hours, is a developer that Shaw uses as a model.
When Skely's account on the X platform was maliciously reported and banned, Shaw, as the founder of ai16z, immediately retweeted the community member's message in support and subsequently stated that the aiPool token has been released, and Skely is still working hard to recover the X account; he expressed generous support for the former.
Shaw KOTO 9 X: Unilateral admiration
Previously, KOTOX 9, which had issued the AI Meme coin KOTO, was suspected of being the target of Shaw's initial criticism (referring to swarms developer Kye), but Shaw later responded to clarify: 'It's not him; KOTO 9 X is a very good developer.' His words contained admiration.
Shaw Dan Romero: Promoter of Farcaster ecosystem construction
In December last year, Shaw stated: 'Farcaster is the future of programmable applications. Eliza has now integrated Farcaster. Moreover, it donated $420 worth of degenai tokens to every developer who embedded AI Agents into the Farcaster ecosystem.'
This move naturally received strong support from Farcaster ecosystem co-founder Dan Romero, who replied in the comments, 'LFG.'
From this perspective, the two are somewhat similar to a partnership.
In addition, Shaw has actively promoted close cooperation between ai16z, Eliza, decentralized computing network Aethir, decentralized AI operating system 0G, and well-known DEX platform Orca.
Other developers of Smolworld: Shaw's team partners
In a tweet at the end of last year, when asked in surprise whether he would no longer participate in Smolworld-related work but instead focus on Eliza and ai16z, Shaw responded: 'Still managing the team, but daily development work is mainly handled by lordasado, Koshi, and Alextitonis.'
Conclusion: AI Agents have no borders, but developers do have borders
As the old saying goes, 'Science knows no borders, but scientists have different nationalities.' Similarly, projects built on the X platform, smart contracts deployed on the chain, and corresponding AI Agents have no borders, but countless developers behind AI Agents may have different borders and relationships filled with love and hate.
Although AI Agents in the crypto field still have significant room for improvement compared to mainstream products, AI Agents and developers are still working hard in their own ways to promote the continuous development of projects, products, and the sector. As swarms developer Kye said, 'Fighting is a zero-sum game where both sides lose; only by working together can we create net gains.'
