Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Never expected that a second round of the 'case battle' similar to neiro and NEIRO could unfold.

Odaily Note: The prequel story can be referred to (Neiro and NEIRO on Binance, is the meme coin track welcoming a turning point?)

Today, the controversy surrounding eliza and ELIZA has become the most discussed topic in the market, even affecting the hot AI concept meme token ai16z which experienced a short-term plunge - GMGN data shows that ai16z once dropped to $0.181, and as of around 5:30 PM, it was reported at $0.269, with a 24-hour decline of 35.9%.

Odaily Planet Daily has sorted out the ins and outs of the story as follows.

Regardless of the case of the token, the so-called Eliza (or eliza or ELIZA, to distinguish in the following text will add the $ symbol) originally refers to an AI Agent supported by ai16z. The virtual image corresponding to Eliza is shown in the figure below, representing a black-haired girl in orange clothes themed around ai16z.

Initially, Eliza had no tokens at all. With ai16z's continuous rise, Eliza's image itself also possessed a certain meme attribute.

Lowercase $eliza leads

At around 4:00 AM Beijing time on November 17 (based on GMGN opening data), the AI Agent token launch platform vvaifu.fun automatically generated an AI and released the lowercase token $eliza, explaining that 'Shaw (founder of ai16z) claimed he never intended to create the Eliza token, so we took the initiative to do this for the community.'

From the dynamics officially reposted by the $eliza team, Shaw did indeed make a similar statement on November 10 and had expressed welcome for the community to launch a token - although Shaw's original words were to welcome the community to launch Eliza the agent, from the subsequent statement about CTO (Community Take Over), it seems Shaw was referring to welcoming the community to launch a token.

According to community feedback, to reward ai16z's contributions, $eliza was also airdropped 7% of the $eliza supply to ai16z as a thank you.

$eliza was warmly embraced by the community upon its launch, soaring to a high of $0.0566, corresponding to a market cap of about $56 million.

Uppercase $ELIZA stirs the pot

Everything seemed normal at first, but the situation changed dramatically on the afternoon of November 19.

At around 2:00 AM on November 19, the uppercase $ELIZA suddenly emerged and quickly surpassed a market cap of $20 million within 10 minutes; by 2:30 AM, Shaw directly posted the contract for $ELIZA on X, clearly stating that $ELIZA is the token jointly issued by ai16z - and at that time, the market cap of $ELIZA had already exceeded $50 million.

As soon as Shaw's statement came out, $eliza immediately plummeted, quickly falling from around $0.026 to a low of $0.007 within 5 minutes, with the maximum drop exceeding 70%.

In contrast, $ELIZA continued to rise, breaking through the $0.1 mark at one point, corresponding to a market cap exceeding $100 million.

Although Shaw mentioned that he would airdrop 10% of the $ELIZA supply to $eliza holders, the holders of $eliza clearly did not buy it. The community questioned Shaw's behavior of pushing the new coin as flip-flopping (previously stating he would not issue coins), harming the real interests of the Eliza supporters who originally invested in $eliza.

More importantly, due to the early rapid rise of $ELIZA (it had already skyrocketed before Shaw's statement), there was hardly any profit space left for the community, which further aggravated the community's anger. Many users even began to accuse Shaw of a suspected conspiracy to control the market.

In addition, the community also exposed another partner of ai16z, Logan, who was selling $eliza all day and buying $ELIZA, which also exacerbated the decline of $eliza.

Is it 'lowercase frontrunning' or 'uppercase food stealing'?

In the dynamics of 'platforming' $ELIZA, Shaw mentioned that 'he had been planning this token release with the cooperative team for the past two weeks,' implying that perhaps the launch of $ELIZA was not a sudden decision after seeing the success of $eliza, or perhaps he was explaining his flip-flopping behavior, emphasizing that the launch of $ELIZA was executed by another cooperative team.

As community doubts fermented, Shaw held two more spaces and released a long article in response. In the response, Shaw mentioned that he had been preparing to launch the token with the aforementioned cooperative team for two weeks, originally planned to release it last Friday, but it was suddenly changed to this Monday. Unexpectedly, over the weekend, a $eliza was suddenly issued by an unknown team... Shaw even directly referred to the emergence of $eliza as a 'frontran' and expressed that he felt very sad because the project he had been preparing for a long time was taken away.

However, on the other side, the $eliza team believes Shaw's behavior is 'taking food from the bowl.' The team has repeatedly stated on X that Shaw's actions are merely an attempt to steal the achievements of $eliza, wanting to claim everything for himself; airdropping 10% of the tokens to $eliza holders is just because Shaw did not want to lose too much face...

The community is in constant dispute, wary of a triple loss situation.

Surrounding the contradictions between $eliza and $ELIZA, the community is in constant dispute.

The current result is that $eliza has already been slashed and slashed again, and ai16z has also experienced a significant decline due to the related impact of this event. Although $ELIZA is temporarily maintaining its upward trend, both this token and Shaw's reputation have suffered a serious blow.

Currently, the holders of $eliza hope to guide the narrative towards 'community power battling conspiracy groups,' replicating the story of neiro's comeback against NEIRO. However, as a re-enactment of a similar plot, the community is bound to experience some aesthetic fatigue. Although $eliza has gradually stabilized at a low level, the rebound trend is not yet apparent, and investors should remain wary of the risk of weakening narratives, DYOR.