Author: BlockBeats

The Base AI series tokens have seen encouraging attention and growth today, with VIRTUAL breaking its historical high, CLANKER's market value surpassing 100M USD, and the emergence of BUG continuing the market's focus on the Base ecosystem since last week's ANON.

A Farcaster user wanted to launch a Christmas concept coin named 'SantaClanker,' but the token name deployed by Clanker turned into a 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 property of BUG was quickly recognized, and its market value once exceeded 5M. At the time of writing, the market value of BUG is 4.31M, with a 24-hour increase of 10,053%.

Last week, Vitalik and Jesse bought Base ecosystem meme coin ANON in succession, once again igniting the AI token craze on Base, and this functional token with ZK technology made the community realize that Base might have welcomed a narrative akin to Degen earlier this year.

Six months ago, most Crypto AI projects in the market were still concepts related to traditional AI technologies like AI+DePIN and computing power leasing, but now, Crypto AI projects have taken on a different direction. From the AI Bot token GOAT, which surged to a market value of 800 million USD without Binance's participation, to last weekend when AI16Z launched the AI investment DAO model, 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, the narrative and main battlefield of AI + Crypto are rapidly evolving from the AI meme craze to the current AI Agent craze, leaving behind those who cannot comprehend the trend of AI memes.

From AI memes to AI Agents, the rapidly evolving narrative of AI + Crypto.

In March this year, Virtual Protocol was launched, aiming to create an AI factory designed for games and the metaverse, making games smarter and enhancing the user experience and interaction. In this wave of narrative transformation from AI memes to AI Agents, Virtual Protocol is undoubtedly the biggest beneficiary, with its native token VIRTUAL increasing by over 4 times in about a week, and its market value nearly breaking 500 million USD.

In mid-October 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 co-own the income generated by the AI Agents. Subsequently, VIRTUAL began its upward trajectory.

AI Agents refer to artificial intelligence that possesses tools and reasoning capabilities, and in the cryptocurrency field, these Agents can access tweets and even have crypto wallets to perform 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 actively search for flights and hotels based on your input, executing booking operations.

For Virtual, its protocol is akin to a decentralized AI factory that supports many different AI Agents, creating on-chain virtual experiences. The AI Agent representative project launched by Virtual is Luna, which possesses 'on-chain self-awareness' capabilities, able to think independently and showcase its thought process on-chain, operating entirely autonomously without relying on human supervision.

However, the AI Agent track did not just become popular after Virtual; projects like Myshell and FLock.io have also launched customized AI Agent functionalities. Currently, the total market capitalization of the AI Agent track has reached 4.65 billion USD, accounting for 14% of the total market capitalization of AI projects (32.6 billion USD).

ArkStream Capital released an AI Agent research report, mentioning that for leading AI Agent products in Web3, building a complete ecosystem and providing diversified functionalities may be more critical 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.

AI in late autumn, AI in Base

Being good at promoting abstract concepts has always been a characteristic of Crypto, and for Base, it has developed this industry culture to the extreme. For example, this wave of AI craze, when it reached the Base ecosystem, was summarized as AI Autumn, just like the previous Onchain Summer and Builder Spring.

While you are still immersed in the thrilling PVP battles on Solana, do you suddenly realize why Base has risen rapidly during this second wave of AI craze this year?

With the 'AI chain' of Hongmiao Zheng

The previously mentioned Virtual Protocol is an AI project deployed on Base. The team has explained why they chose Base for deployment, as it supports accelerating the realization of a decentralized open AI agent network, achieving common interests through the neutrality of blockchain, while also 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 also follow the same decentralized and open-source path to unleash its potential.

Thus, the entire company of Coinbase and its incubated Base will implement this concept thoroughly.

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

Coinbase's intentions to add payment functionality to AI Agents are not impulsive but have been planned for a long time. As early as May this year, Brian Armstrong mentioned that 'self-custody crypto wallets will support AI Agents.' Brian has also publicly provided an independent crypto wallet for the AI chatbot Truth Terminal.

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

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 capabilities in just 3 minutes, enabling 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 to have the API keys from the Coinbase developer project and OpenAI to use it. However, currently, Based Agent does not have any actual use cases.

Liquidity building up

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 capital inflow is Solana, reaching 1.6 billion USD, but in the last month, Base has had the largest inflow, totaling 253 million USD. This means that in the past month, the capital growth rate has surpassed Solana, making it number one.

As shown in the image below, the overflow funds from Ethereum and Solana have mainly flowed into Base.

On September 12, Coinbase officially announced the launch of its wrapped Bitcoin token Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC), running on the Ethereum network and backed by 1:1 Bitcoin. With the launch of cbBTC by Coinbase, on-chain assets within Base, such as AERO, WELL, VIRTUAL, and others, have genuinely felt the infusion of liquidity.

Before this, the Coinbase wallet and USDC infrastructure also ensured liquidity on Base. On October 26, Base handled a trading volume of 18.1 billion USD in stablecoins (of which 99.9% was USDC), accounting for over 30% of the total stablecoin trading volume that day.

What should we pay attention to?

Crypto researcher Howe has stated that the future development of the AI Agent track should focus on the following four points: First, projects that purely rely on Agent narratives find it difficult to stand out and must attract market attention through differentiated competition; second, AI Agents will gradually shift from being standalone to interconnected AgentFi, enhancing user experience through data and service sharing; third, tool projects that support Agent development with a 'selling water logic' will have greater market opportunities, similar to stable profit-generating infrastructure; finally, the main revenue source for Agent products comes from B-end, while C-end is more for building reputation, although C-end user promotion also helps with market dissemination of the products.

Now that both Coinbase and Base have prepared the stage for this grand AI drama, 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 happening entirely in the backyard of Base SocialFi, Farcaster. At the time of this article's initial release, readers were recommended to pay attention to task publishing platforms like Bountycaster, AI Agent Aether, and others. Next, I will introduce projects in this wave of Base AI tokens that should be closely monitored.

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 the corresponding Clanker.world link for users to view and manage. The community has even compared it with Pump Fun and created a Dune dashboard for data analysis.

Clanker's success is not only reflected in its technical aspects but also in redefining community participation and asset creation models, injecting vitality into decentralized social and economic systems. So far, CLANKER has supported the creation of nearly 2000 types of tokens, among which LUM and ANON have rapidly grown into star projects on Base. This morning, CLANKER's market value once surpassed 15M, and at the time of writing, it stands at 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: could you come up with a good token name and symbol, devise an image concept, and then deploy it through Clanker? Aether accepted the challenge, creating the token 'Luminous', with the code LUM, representing the collective wisdom of humanity and AI collaboration, and collaborated with Clanker to deploy LUM entirely without human intervention.

This event is significant because it marks the first time in history that two AI agents autonomously generated a unit of economic value. This asset was neither conceived by humans nor produced by machines under human directives, but was born through the autonomous collaboration of artificial intelligence. This event blurs the lines between human and machine creativity, challenging our traditional understanding of creation and value, while also prompting us to rethink the foundations of economy and innovation.

ANON

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

This morning, Ethereum's Vitalik and Base protocol leader Jesse each bought 30,000 ANON tokens to experience the Superanon anonymous posting function, causing ANON's market value to skyrocket, exceeding 60M at one point. At the time of writing, ANON's market value remains at 54M, with a 24-hour increase of 312%.

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 value of 2.24M and a 24-hour increase of 686%.

The name 33BITS comes from the theory of '33 Bits of Entropy' 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 worldwide, highlighting the importance of privacy protection. The usage process of 33BITS heavily relies on zero-knowledge proof technology. After logging in through Warpcast, the system generates zk proofs within the user's browser, and after backend verification, anonymous posts are published to the @33BITS account, ensuring that the user's real identity is not exposed, thus fully protecting the privacy of FID.