Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Asher (@Asher_ 0210 )

As you can see, the market value of ai16z has skyrocketed 100 times in just two months, and the Eliza framework ranked first in the trend list in December last year, with a total of 9,703 stars.

I first bought ai16z at the end of October last year, when the price was between $0.02 and $0.025. In the following days, I transferred SOL from the exchange to ai16z through multiple wallets in this range. (By the way, the price of ai16z today is $1.77, and I am glad I am still in the car.)

Partial purchase of ai16z's holdings

Scene 1: A beautiful misunderstanding

To be honest, my initial choice and investment in ai16z was a "wrong acquaintance". Before November 2024, my main focus was on blockchain games and the money-making sector. I manually earned tokens from Pixels, RP points from Mocaverse's cooperative projects, and rubies from Heroes of Mavia, but ultimately did not achieve the expected returns.

During this period, I discovered through X-brushing that the effect of making money on the chain is significant, especially the Meme sector. After GOAT, the concept of AI Meme on the chain exploded, and many "myths of getting rich" appeared, which made me realize the focus of research. You should make a change and start buying SOL on the exchange and put it in your wallet to look for high-quality AI Meme projects.

One day, I accidentally discovered a project called ai16z, which was supported by Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z. Marc posted a message on his official Twitter account, reposting the concept image of ai16z and the official Twitter link. I thought to myself: Isn’t the official project of a16z a potential stock? So I decided to buy ai16z.

Act 2: An unexpected success?

As my position continued to increase, my research on ai16z continued to deepen. As expected, I found that the ai16z project had nothing to do with a16z. This discovery caught me off guard, but I didn't sell it immediately. Instead, I decided to continue observing. At that time, the market value of ai16z was only fluctuating between 20 and 30 million US dollars. Although ai16z had nothing to do with a16z, I decided to "take a chance" (in case people who came in later hadn't discovered it yet).

On the one hand, from the perspective of project fundamentals, ai16z belongs to the AI ​​concept. The AI ​​concept has always been a hot topic whether in Web2 or Web3, and its founder Shaw frequently interacts on X, giving people a feeling of being very "lively". On the other hand, from the analysis of capital data, I found that there were many early whitelist addresses that bought at very low costs and did not sell at the high point after the opening. At the same time, I also found that many GOAT big players continued to transfer positions to ai16z, and new wallets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars bought ai16z in a single position.

As expected, the market's enthusiasm really came to the AI ​​sector. In one week, the market value of ai16z rose from less than 30 million US dollars to more than 500 million US dollars. As ai16z rose, I believed that the projects of ELIZA ecosystem would continue to be recognized by the market, so I began to reduce my holdings of ai16z and shifted my holdings to the two projects Shaw mentioned most, degenai and ELIZA.

degenai is the first AI agent developed by the ai16z team. It will share alpha information on Twitter and conduct autonomous transactions based on it. Degenai is a whitelisted project of the ai16z DAO (never sold) and 8% of the profits are used to buy back degenai. ELIZA is an AI Agent supported by the ai16z team. At the end of last year, ai16z founder Shaw joined the Eliza project as a consultant. At the same time, Eliza Studios director, ai16z creative Jeff, Nous Research researcher Ropirito and Ryze Labs founder Matthew also announced that they would become consultants for the Eliza project. Simply put, if degenai succeeds, it will be an "AIXBT with built-in trading function." ELIZA can be understood as the spiritual totem of the ELIZA framework.

Act 3: Change car or not?

However, the development of the ai16z project has not been smooth sailing. With the popularity of the AI ​​agent sector, many emerging challengers have emerged, among which swarms has attracted the most attention. Kye Gomez, the core founder behind swarms, is known as a "genius boy" in the field of artificial intelligence. Although he dropped out of high school, he developed the multi-agent coordination framework Swarms in just three years and successfully ran 45 million AI agents.

However, due to Shaw's comments on Kye's code plagiarism, Swarms' market value fell from a high of 25 million US dollars to a low of less than 13 million US dollars that day. I think regardless of whether Kye is suspected of code plagiarism, Swarms itself is an AI framework with great potential, so it is continuously bought amidst the FUD sentiment.

I met Shaw offline, and it was very comfortable to chat with him. He is not a "troll". At the end of December last year, when I learned that Shaw was coming to Shanghai to participate in the offline Dev Meetup and the company arranged for me to go for an interview, I was very excited. For the three ai16z series projects in which I have a large position, I can finally ask the project owners directly about the latest situation of the project.

This face-to-face communication completely dispelled any doubts I had about him and the ai16z team. Shaw is not the "high and mighty" person I imagined. On the contrary, he is very kind and amiable, and seems to be fully committed to building ai16z DAO into a more powerful platform. During the communication, I felt his enthusiasm and determination for the ELIZA framework, and I also firmly believe that my position will usher in more generous returns.

Therefore, I sold swarms and added ELIZA and degenai. (Click here to view the interview with Shaw (full interview with ai16z founder Shaw: Eliza framework, DAO innovation and how AI reshapes the future of Web3).)

Act 4: Believe and hold - fasten your seat belts and wait for takeoff

I believe the price of ai16z projects will reach a new height after the ai16z token economics update. Around January 1, the ai16z team initiated a token economics update proposal, focusing on the Launchpad phase in the first quarter of 2025. Through the acquisition of mature technologies and teams, focusing on Eliza framework innovation, including multi-chain integration, etc., increasing startup fees, staking and other value capture mechanisms. With the construction of the Launchpad platform, it is conceivable that a large number of projects will flow into the ai16z ecosystem in the first quarter of 2025, and the demand for ai16z tokens will increase significantly.

Since last weekend, I have been feeling a little volatile watching the continued surge in swarms, but I still believe in the ai16z system, and believe that ELIZA and degenai are still waiting for value discovery. At present, more than 80% of my on-chain positions are in three projects in the ai16z system, of which ELIZA accounts for 50%, degenai accounts for 20%, and ai16z accounts for 10%. I look forward to the update of ELIZA's token economics on January 10 and its subsequent diversified development; I look forward to degenai's upcoming artificial intelligence agent surpassing AIXBT; I look forward to the adjustment of the ai16z token economic model, the launch of Launchpad, and even the launch of its own L1 blockchain.

Finally, I am optimistic about the Eliza framework and embrace the ai16z series.