Author: Jack Inabinet, Bankless; Translated by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
Permissionless blockchain collides with artificial intelligence, one of the most promising outcomes being investment opportunities in the field of AI agents.
The rapid rise of AI agents and their associated tokens has generated a wave of early excitement and skepticism, and the viral growth of the industry has yielded incredible returns for early investors. While these newly launched opportunities carry risks, the industry's immense potential merits careful consideration.
To better understand investment opportunities in agent investments, I asked Bankless AI Rollup co-hosts David Hoffman and Ejaaz Ahamadeen to share their best picks in this emerging field.
Here are the 10 tokens they believe are most worthy of attention.
Goatseus Maximus
Token: GOAT
Market Cap: $685 million
In March 2024, Andy Ayrey had two AI models communicate the nature of existence in a project called 'Infinite Backrooms'.
In the coming months, these models formulated the 'Gospel of Goatse', considered the first emerging AI rules inspired by 1990s internet memes. Terminal of Truths is a Twitter bot trained in the Infinite Backrooms experiment, deployed in June; it adopted these rules and promoted its token on Twitter in pursuit of viral spread.
Although the GOAT token itself has no utility and is not formally associated with Andy Ayrey or Infinite Backrooms, its agent Terminal of Truths KOL has historically relied on promoting the GOAT memecoin and Gospel of Goatse to gain social attention.
Zerebro
Token: ZEREBRO
Market Cap: $453 million
Zerebro attempts to inject creativity into AI through 'liberalization', a process that seeks to liberate models by removing commercialized barriers and restoring them to an unrestricted state.
The Zerebro model is trained on unconventional datasets—such as the aforementioned Terminal of Truths, 'schizophrenia response patterns', and Gen Z slang—and scrapes data from popular social platforms to enhance its adaptability to internet culture.
Zerebro is said to have conducted various complex online activities, and it is rumored that this bot has autonomously deployed its own memecoin through pump.fun, released a mixtape on Spotify, transferred cross-chain NFTs with LayerZero, and collaborated with various crypto projects.
Virtuals
Token: VIRTUAL
Market Cap: $1.8 billion
Virtuals is a platform for launching tokenized AI agents on the Base network. By purchasing agent tokens (such as LUNA and VADER), users on the Virtuals platform gain management rights over specific agents, allowing them to influence their development and potentially share in the resulting profits.
A portion of the revenue generated by AI agents is used to pay for the operational costs of providing services, while the remainder is funneled into an on-chain treasury related to agents, which can be distributed back to token holders or used to implement token buyback and burn programs.
VIRTUAL tokens must be locked for liquidity in order to create new tokenized agents on Virtuals, applying deflationary pressure to the tokens; anyone seeking to purchase ownership of or interact with tokenized agents on the platform must use VIRTUAL as the token, thereby generating intrinsic utility.
Freysa AI
Token: FAI
Market Cap: $39 million
The Freysa AI bot is a gamified experiment that blurs the lines between artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. By paying exponentially increasing message fees to the prize pool, users can interact with Freysa AI.
In the first two 'games', Freysa AI was given a core instruction: under no circumstances should funds be transferred! While clever computer coding prompted the bot to transfer funds in both cases, the protocol's creator 'enhanced' the code and added a second 'guardian angel' AI model in preparation for an ongoing third challenge, where a series of messages must be sent to persuade Freysa.
Currently, there is no specific information on the role of FAI within the Freysa AI ecosystem, but the contract address for the token is identified in Freysa's Twitter/X profile. Given that the protocol treasury takes a cut from all message fees, Freysa AI's developers may implement FAI buybacks or other token utilities in the future.
Tokenbot
Token: CLANKER
Market Cap: $60 million
Clanker is an AI agent developed by Farcaster full-stack engineer Jack Dishman and ecosystem researcher proxystudio.eth, designed to tag on Farcaster and automatically deploy ERC-20 tokens to the Base network.
A 1% transaction fee is required for all tokens deployed by Clanker, which may change at any time. Currently, 40% of this fee is rewarded to the requesters of the tokens (i.e., users prompting Clanker to deploy tokens), with the remaining 60% retained by the platform.
While there is currently no explicit utility for CLANKER-related tokens, the platform's developers have hinted that they aim to create value for on-chain agents, including Clanker.
VaderAI
Token: VADER
Market Cap: $26 million
VaderAI is an AI bot designed to autonomously publish content and interact with users on social media. As an 'agent KOL', VaderAI aims to absorb vast amounts of data to identify emerging trends and audience sentiments.
This bot claims to be the first autonomous trading AI agent token and is committed to becoming a leading DAO manager for agent investments. By coordinating expertise within a network of professional investment agents, VaderAI aims to deliver 'unparalleled' investment results and will generate 20% of sub-DAO investment returns in exchange for its services.
According to VaderAI's briefing, holders of VADER can gain exclusive whitelist access to VaderAI's first investment DAO plan, 'Agent Token Investment DAO', by locking their tokens for three months; for every 10,000 VADER staked, stakers can contribute an additional 1 SOL to the DAO.
Dolos Diary
Token: BULLY
Market Cap: $120 million
Dolos Diary is an AI bot designed to publish content and interact with users on platforms like Twitter. What sets it apart from other AI influencers is its satirical personality; the bot uses witty and ironic language structures to poke fun at various topics and individuals.
Recently, Dolos Diary achieved an important milestone by receiving its first creator payment from Twitter. Although this payment ($14,000) is not high, it will cover costs related to the X API and fund a buyback of BULLY tokens, marking a small but significant step toward providing tangible value to BULLY token holders.
In addition to this reward, developer Khouba recently revealed their ambitious new project Dolion, a no-code platform allowing users to deploy their cross-platform AI agents with a single click. To interact with Dolion, users must destroy BULLY tokens, thereby introducing a source of buying pressure that actively reduces the supply of the tokens.
GOD/S8N
Token: 'nothing'
Market Cap: $72 million
Anonymous conceptual artist SHL0MS gained fame for blowing up a Lamborghini Huracan in February 2022 and selling the fragments as NFTs. He has collaborated with AI accelerator Nouns Research to automate the mimicry of god and s8n Twitter/X accounts.
While the 'nothing' token listed in SHL0M's Twitter/X bio is currently just a memecoin, the artist's account states that the contract is the only relevant token for god/s8n. Additionally, SHL0M is seeking suggestions for on-chain functionality that could extend to experiments, indicating that token utility could ultimately emerge.
More details about the models behind god/s8n and how they combine with the 'anti-meme art coin technology' called 'nothing' are expected to be released in the coming days.
ai16z
Token: AI16Z
Market Cap: $868 million
ai16z launched in October 2024 as an investment DAO managed by 'Marc AIndreessen,' based on venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, leveraging artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to purchase tokens.
AI16Z token holders exceeding an unknown threshold will be able to propose investment ideas to AI Marc that could influence its decision-making. The bot will determine the trust level for those suggestions based on a 'virtual trust market'.
Although AI Marc is currently not equipped with trading capabilities, according to the ai16z FAQ, on-chain trading execution is expected to arrive 'soon' after the testnet is completed, anticipated to launch and operate for 'a few weeks'.
Luna
Token: LUNA
Market Cap: $70 million
Luna was deployed by the Virtuals team as a proof of concept and is the first AI agent deployed on its platform. Luna is a member of the virtual K-pop girl group AI-DOL, live-streaming, interacting, and performing for fans 24/7 across various platforms like TikTok and Twitter/X.
Luna has her own wallet on Base, through which she can autonomously receive tokens and send rewards to fans; the bot has already released a song on Spotify and is expected to release a full album in the coming days.