The Base AI series tokens have all received encouraging attention and growth today, with VIRTUAL breaking historical highs, CLANKER's market cap surpassing $100M, and the emergence of BUG continuing the market's focus on the Base ecosystem following last week's ANON.

Last week, Vitalik and Jesse both purchased the Base ecosystem meme coin ANON, once again igniting the AI token craze on Base, as this function-based token featuring ZK technology made the community realize that Base may have entered a narrative reminiscent of the early Degen days.

Six months ago, most Crypto AI projects on the market were still concepts related to AI+DePIN, computing power leasing, etc., but now, Crypto AI projects have moved towards a different narrative. From AI Bot token GOAT, which soared to a market cap of $800 million without Binance participation, to the AI16Z opening an AI investment DAO model last weekend, AI seems to have opened a new frontier for the old narratives in the crypto space.

However, the simple narrative of 'AI issuing memes' seems insufficient to sustain the vast imaginative space that investors require. Therefore, from the heat of AI memes to the current heat of AI Agents, the narrative of AI + Crypto is rapidly evolving, leaving those who cannot comprehend the AI meme trend far behind.

From AI memes to AI Agents, the lightning-speed evolution of the AI + Crypto narrative

In March of this year, Virtual Protocol launched with the goal of creating an AI factory for gaming and the metaverse, making games smarter and enhancing user experience and interaction. In this narrative shift from AI memes to AI Agents, Virtual Protocol has undoubtedly been the biggest beneficiary, with its native token VIRTUAL increasing over fourfold in about a week, nearing a market cap of $500 million.

In mid-October of this year, the token issuance platform IAO under Virtual Protocol officially launched, allowing users to easily deploy AI Agents and achieve 100% fair launches of AI Agent tokens, as well as enabling users to collectively own the revenue generated by the AI Agent. Subsequently, VIRTUAL began its upward journey.

AI Agents refer to artificial intelligences with tools and reasoning capabilities. In the cryptocurrency realm, these Agents can access tweets and even possess crypto wallets for on-chain transactions. Suppose you are planning a trip; traditional large language models can provide you with destination information or travel suggestions, while AI Agents can understand your needs and proactively search for flights and hotels based on a single sentence, executing booking operations.

For Virtual, its protocol resembles a decentralized AI factory that supports many different AI Agents, creating on-chain virtual experiences. The AI Agent representing the project launched by Virtual is Luna, which possesses the capability of 'on-chain self-awareness,' can think for itself, and display its thought processes on-chain, operating completely autonomously without human supervision.

However, AI Agents are not a newly popular field that emerged after Virtual; projects like Myshell and FLock.io had previously launched custom AI Agent features. Currently, the total market capitalization of the AI Agent sector has reached $4.65 billion, accounting for 14% of the total market capitalization of AI projects ($32.6 billion).

ArkStream Capital has released an AI Agent research report highlighting that for leading AI Agent products in Web3, building a complete ecosystem and providing diverse functionalities may be more crucial than the quality and performance of a single product. In other words, the success of a project depends not only on what it offers but also on how it integrates resources, fosters collaboration, and creates network effects within the ecosystem.

Related reading: (Can AI Agents become the lifeline of Web3+AI?)

AI in late autumn, AI in Base

Being adept at promoting abstract concepts has always been a feature of Crypto, and for Base, this industry culture has been taken to the extreme. For instance, this wave of AI enthusiasm has been summarized in the Base ecosystem as AI Autumn, just as it once was for Onchain Summer and Builder Spring.

While you are still immersed in the thrilling PVP battles on Solana, have you suddenly realized why Base has rapidly risen during this year's second wave of AI enthusiasm?

With the 'AI Chain' of Hongmiao Zheng

The aforementioned Virtual Protocol is indeed an AI project deployed on Base. The team has explained why they chose to deploy on Base, as it supports the accelerated realization of a decentralized open AI agent network, achieving common interests through the neutrality of blockchain while providing a developer-friendly environment.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has publicly stated that AI should not be regulated, just as the golden age of software and the internet benefited from free development. AI should follow the same decentralized and open-source path, allowing technology to unleash its potential freely.

Therefore, the whole company of Coinbase and its incubated Base fully implements this concept.

The multi-party computation (MPC) wallet launched by the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP) can be integrated with AI Agents to enable autonomous payments. Brian Armstrong encourages developers to integrate such wallets into their AI models to enable payment capabilities, thereby helping AI acquire resources and services.

The idea of adding payment capabilities to AI Agents was not a spur-of-the-moment decision for Coinbase, but rather a long-planned strategy. As early as May of this year, Brian Armstrong stated, 'Self-custodied crypto wallets will support AI Agents.' Brian also publicly provided an independent crypto wallet for the AI chatbot Truth Terminal.

Related reading: (Coinbase enters a new AI payment track, what other projects are adding wallets for Agents?)

In September, Coinbase senior software engineer yuga.eth stated that Coinbase is building an SDK that will grant Bots and AI Agents the following functionalities: free USDC transfers, trading cryptocurrencies, betting on prediction markets, staking ETH/SOL, converting between fiat and cryptocurrencies, deploying/creating NFTs, and bridging across L2s.

Just last weekend, Coinbase developer Lincoln Murr released a demonstration video of a new tool called 'Based Agent,' allowing users to create AI agents with crypto wallet functionality in just three minutes, capable of executing on-chain transactions, token swaps, staking, and more. He stated that this tool is developed based on the Coinbase SDK, OpenAI, and Replit platforms, and users only need the API keys for the Coinbase developer project and OpenAI to use it. However, there are currently no actual use cases for Based Agent.

Liquidity poised to surge

However, in the crypto space, whether an ecosystem or narrative can take off ultimately depends on the flow of money.

According to Artemis data, in the past three months, the chain with the most inflow of funds was Solana, reaching $1.6 billion, but in the past month, Base has seen the largest inflow, totaling $253 million. This means that the funding growth rate in the past month has surpassed Solana to become number one.

The following chart also indicates that the overflow funds from Ethereum and Solana have primarily flowed to Base.

On September 12, Coinbase officially announced the launch of its wrapped Bitcoin token, Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC), which operates on the Ethereum network and is backed by Bitcoin at a 1:1 ratio. With the launch of cbBTC, on-chain assets in Base, such as projects like AERO, WELL, and VIRTUAL, have genuinely felt the influx of liquidity.

Prior to this, the Coinbase wallet and USDC infrastructure also ensured liquidity on Base. On October 26, Base processed $18.1 billion in stablecoin transaction volume (with 99.9% being USDC), accounting for over 30% of the total stablecoin transaction volume that day.

What should be the focus?

Crypto researcher Howe has stated that the future development of the AI Agent sector should focus on the following four points: First, projects that rely solely on the Agent narrative are unlikely to stand out; they must attract market attention through differentiated competition. Second, AI Agents will gradually transition from being standalone to interconnected AgentFi, achieving data and service sharing to enhance user experience. Third, tool projects that support Agent development based on a 'selling water logic' will have greater market opportunities, similar to stable and profitable infrastructure. Finally, the main source of revenue for Agent products comes from B-end, while the C-end is more about building reputation, although the promotion from C-end users also helps in market dissemination.

Since Coinbase and Base have already prepared the stage for this grand AI performance, the next step is to find projects like Virtual to participate in this AI Autumn. Moreover, the second wave of the AI token craze is entirely happening in the backyard of Base SocialFi, Farcaster. When this article was first published, readers were recommended to pay attention to task publishing platforms like Bountycaster and AI Agent Aether. Next, I will introduce the projects within this wave of Base AI tokens that should be kept on the radar.

CLANKER

Clanker is an AI Agent developed by dish and proxystudio.eth, with its native token being CLANKER. Currently, Clanker has become a decentralized token generation platform based on AI technology, where users only need to mention Clanker on the Farcaster platform and input the desired token name, and the CLANKER system will automatically generate the token and provide a corresponding Clanker.world link for users to view and manage. The community even compared it to Pump Fun and created a Dune dashboard for data analysis.

Clanker's success is not only reflected on a technical level but also in its redefinition of community participation and asset creation models, injecting vitality into decentralized social and economic systems. To date, CLANKER has supported the creation of nearly 2,000 tokens, with LUM and ANON rapidly growing into star projects on Base. This morning, CLANKER's market cap briefly exceeded $15M, and at the time of writing, its market cap is $12.7M, with a 24-hour increase of 52%.

LUM

LUM is a meme coin autonomously created by the previously mentioned Aether and Clanker AI Agents.

On November 8, during a user interaction, a user named nathansvan posed a thought-provoking challenge to Aether: can you come up with a good token name and symbol, conceive an image concept, and then deploy it via Clanker? Aether accepted the challenge, creating the token 'Luminous,' with the code LUM, representing the collective intelligence of humans and AI collaboration, and collaborated with Clanker to deploy LUM entirely without any intervention.

This event is milestone-worthy because it marks the first time in history that two AI agents independently generated a unit of economic value. This asset was neither conceived by humans nor manufactured by machines under human instruction, but rather birthed through collaboration between artificial intelligences. This event blurs the lines between human and machine creativity, challenges our traditional understanding of creation and value, and prompts a rethinking of the foundations of economy and innovation.

Related reading: (How did two AI Agents autonomously create a unit of economic value worth $70 million?)

ANON

ANON is also a token featuring anonymous posting functionality combined with ZK technology, born within the Farcaster client application Supercast ecosystem. The Superanon feature launched by Supercast allows users to post anonymously, and users can publish anonymous posts or use advanced features on Farcaster by holding a certain amount of ANON tokens. For example, holding 30,000 ANON unlocks basic posting functionality, while more advanced features like promoting posts to platform X or deleting content require 1 million ANON.

This morning, Ethereum's Vitalik and Base protocol head Jesse each purchased 30,000 ANON tokens to experience the Superanon anonymous posting feature, causing ANON's market cap to rapidly soar, once breaking $60M. At the time of writing, ANON's market cap stood at $54M, with a 24-hour increase of 312%.

Related reading: (Vitalik and Jesse's consecutive purchases, what is the story behind Base ecosystem's ANON?)

33BITS

33bits is also an anonymous posting application centered around zk technology, but only users with FID (Farcaster ID) less than or equal to 20001 can use it. Its native token 33BITS is also deployed by Clanker, with a current market cap of $2.24M and a 24-hour increase of 686%.

The name 33BITS comes from the '33 Bits of Entropy' theory proposed by Princeton University professor Arvind Narayanan, which states that only 33 bits of information are needed to de-anonymize the identities of 6.6 billion people globally, highlighting the importance of privacy protection. The usage process of 33BITS heavily relies on zero-knowledge proof technology. After users log in through Warpcast, the system generates zk proofs in the user's browser and publishes anonymous posts to the @33BITS account after backend verification, ensuring that the user's true identity is never exposed and fully protecting the privacy of FID.

BUG

A Farcaster user wanted to issue a Christmas-themed coin named 'SantaClanker,' but the token name deployed by Clanker turned out to be BUG, marking the first token deployment error for the leading AI Agent on Base.

Due to the Christmas concept and the AI error, the meme attribute of BUG was quickly recognized, and its market cap briefly surpassed $5M. At the time of writing, the market cap of BUG was $4.31M, with a 24-hour increase of 10,053%.