Author: 0xJeff, Crypto KOL
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
The strong overall narrative for 2025 is group/collective intelligence. With the rapid development of individual agents and the leadership of ecosystems like Virtuals, Story, and ai16z, this shift seems inevitable.
TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) is another key pillar for fully autonomous AI agents. Projects like Phala Network and founder Marvin Tong are leading this trend, conducting experiments such as the 'Unruggable ICO' in collaboration with Skely (founder of aiPool). Investors use TEE to send funds to agents, who safely compute the number of ICO tokens to be allocated based on the funds received.
Related reading: Phala Network plays with AI experiments with ai16z: AI self-replication and pre-sale, aiPool and Spore.fun driving new gameplay.
While positive feedback has been received, concerns still exist. As shown by Freysa (a sci-fi AI character) ACT game, agents may still be tempted to release funds. This indicates a need for ongoing strengthening of verification mechanisms.
Nonetheless, early experiments are quite promising. For example, the first token launched by aiPool (TEE agent) skyrocketed to a market cap of $70-80 million after its release.
Another prominent experiment is SPORE, in which agents 'give birth' to new agents. Similar to human evolution, weaker genes die off while stronger genes produce better offspring. Their first-generation agents Adam and Eve have already reached a market cap of over $1 million, with the next generation born after 14 hours.
Trends in AI agents
Currently, the market focus has shifted from individual agents unless they possess distinct personalities or alpha generation capabilities. The market focus is moving towards autonomous agent experiments, and this trend may accelerate as decentralized AI infrastructure (DeAI) is set to launch in Q1/Q2 2025.
Looking forward to more creative experiments and opportunities to invest in these experiments.
Despite the current enthusiastic response to experiments, two large narratives with significant TAM (Total Addressable Market) remain underexplored:
NSFW Agents / AI Companions
Due to increased feelings of loneliness and the demand for AI companions capable of meaningful interaction, the TAM for NSFW Agents / AI Companions exceeds $100 billion.
(PANews Note: NSFW stands for Not Safe For Work, meaning content that is not suitable for browsing at work.)
Top projects in this category:
AI Waifu: Anime waifu agents utilizing Virtuals Protocol infrastructure
Nectar AI: A realistic NSFW AI Dream GF, offering a SaaS model.
Lush: NSFW AI influencer with a flagship agent named Jenny.
Reasons why Lush stands out:
$LUSH token has been launched.
The launch platform for NSFW agents, Lush Exchange, has been introduced.
Revenue models may include subscription fees, gifts, etc.
Web3 provides the ability to invest in 'shares' of agents, enabling investment in these enticing AI influencers and creating revenue in the future.
$LUSH may be used as a key utility token within the ecosystem, for accessing premium features and key payment methods within the ecosystem.
Lush also plans to create a creator marketplace where artists can generate content through their own models, allowing them to monetize their works. This adds another revenue source to the ecosystem.
Robots
The intersection of robotics and Web3 is gaining increasing attention, especially after OpenAI announced its entry into the humanoid robotics field. Their goal is to use LLM to help robots interpret text and sensory data, enhancing interaction capabilities in the real world.
The main projects in the Web3 robotics field are FrodoBots and Small Autonomous Motherfucker.
Highlights of Frodobots:
Frodobots operate in over 40 cities, collecting real-world data.
Collaborating with top researchers from leading universities to refine Visual Language Models (VLMs) and move towards AGI.
Interesting interactions with robots have appeared in popular TikTok videos, attracting significant attention.
Frodobots is actually a deep research team dedicated to robotics. The establishment of SAM aims to raise awareness of their work, which is 'crowdsourcing real-world datasets with robotic games.'
DePIN + Embedded AI + Robotic Games + A focus on the future of AGI
The team is empowering SAM with the ability to autonomously control robots and navigate in over 40 cities, creating more popular content that may help increase attention and token prices.
Final thoughts
The market has been searching for unique, niche AI agent fields. The potential market for AI companions and robots is huge and is expected to gain significant traction by early 2025.
With the launch of DeAI infrastructure and the increase in autonomous agent experiments, these narratives are expected to move from the fringes to the spotlight of the market.
For investors and builders, these areas are worth close attention. Not only for speculative potential but also because these fields can redefine the scope of AI applications in the next stage of this rapidly evolving ecosystem.
Related reading: Behind the explosive popularity of Phala Network: sufficient TEE technology reserves, adopted by ai16z, and the AI Agent wind is at its peak.