Original title: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
Reprinted: Luke, Mars Finance
On December 22, 2024, in the afternoon, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill landed in Shanghai. That night, I and members of the 706 community (one of the largest youth communities in China), along with developers and investors from the crypto community, welcomed him and had dinner together. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a conversation before we went to a restaurant for lunch, and then took Shaw to his first meetup venue in China. It can be said that I witnessed Shaw's itinerary in Shanghai quite completely.
Shaw generously shared with us the next focus of work for ai16z and Eliza, describing the future landscape of AI Agents, and provided specific analyses and evaluations of current well-known AI Agent projects, giving me and my companions a deeper understanding of the AI Agent track.
Looking back, Shaw and his founded ai16z have only been famous in the industry for about a month. As the founder of a startup project, he has gained widespread and eager attention from many investors, developers, and media in the crypto industry. Why is this the case? I think it may be related to the booming situation of AI Agents in the crypto industry, and ai16z is precisely one of the core projects leading this AI Agent meme narrative wave.
The narrative of the crypto AI Agent has only started a month ago, but it is already considered one of the hottest topics of discussion in the current crypto industry. Many crypto practitioners have identified that AI Agent will become one of the main narratives of this crypto cycle. ai16z is one of the most well-known projects, having created the world's first VC AI Agent—ai16z DAO, the first well-known open-source AI Agent crypto framework—Eliza, and has gained attention and recognition from Marc Andreessen, the founder of the well-known American venture capital firm a16z. As a result, the token of ai16z reached a market value of $1 billion within a month, and related tokens like DegenAI, Eliza, and aiPool have also garnered widespread attention from the community.
When this important narrative was born, crypto practitioners were eager to know the real situation of the current AI Agent track. Is it a bubble, or real applications? What are the latest developments in the U.S., and what will the next steps for AI Agents in the crypto industry look like? For this reason, I summarized the communication I had with Shaw over the past two days into fifteen important pieces of information, including his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is a serial entrepreneur in AI Agents living in San Francisco and was once a game developer.
Regarding Shaw's work and life background, Shaw stated that he lives in San Francisco, initially as a game developer, and will soon launch a product that combines AI Agents with games; this experiment has already begun. Shaw's interest in AI Agents began during the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. Shaw has worked in the AI field, where every company he has been in has a strong AI component, including developing AI Agent platforms and AI Agents in 3D worlds. Shaw has also founded several AI-related companies, but the early projects did not achieve wide success.
2. Shaw stated that several games based on the Eliza framework are about to be launched.
Shaw stated that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where you will have a pet monkey that you can tell what to do. It might listen to you, or maybe it won't. The game is interesting because without AI Agents, such games wouldn't be possible. Your goal is to take care of your virtual pet like a parent.
There are several games using Eliza that are about to be launched, such as Eternum, which is integrating Eliza so that the agents in the game will have wallets. And you can 'kill' these agents and take their money.
3. Shaw wants to create Marc AIndreessen as a practical AI Agent investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
Regarding Marc AIndreessen, this AI Agent, which has a name almost identical to the famous investor Marc Andreessen, is currently still in a very early stage (only one tweet has been posted). Shaw said his original intention was to create it as a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The role of this product is that if a human recommends it to purchase a token, it will consider buying it. To prevent malicious actors from recommending things that shouldn't be purchased, it will construct a trust mechanism called 'trust market.' The idea of the trust mechanism is that if you recommend good tokens, it will place virtual orders for everyone, but not real purchases. It ultimately only listens to the trading advice of those who continuously provide very good trading information to it.
4. Marc Andreessen has followed several of Shaw's accounts online, but they have not met offline. Shaw knows some people from a16z.
Marc Andreessen is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in American venture capital. He has paid attention to and retweeted the ai16z project, but Shaw stated that they have not met offline. "I've been an AI Agent developer for a while, and he has followed a few of my accounts, but we haven't met privately," Shaw said.
According to Shaw, Eddy Lazzarin, the CTO of a16z's cryptocurrency department, messaged Shaw, saying he had been in the project's Discord channel since day one but had said nothing. When Shaw asked him if he liked this AI Agent, he replied, 'No, I'm just watching, like we're monitoring you.'
5. Shaw stated that he does not hold Eliza tokens and will never issue an independent token for the Eliza framework in the future.
Shaw stated that he personally holds both ai16z and DegenAI tokens, keeping them in his wallet. However, he does not own Eliza tokens and will not issue an independent token for the Eliza framework.
"Members of ai16z do not want us to create another token, so I will never do that," Shaw said. At the same time, he also stated that ai16z owns 10% of Eliza tokens. We support capitalized Eliza and the team behind Eliza; he said this is a very excellent team.
6. Openness and ease of use are the core competitiveness of the Eliza framework.
Shaw also shared the characteristics of ai16z in his mind: open source, decentralized, and community-driven development model.
He believes that openness and ease of use are the core competitiveness of the Eliza framework. Shaw emphasized that the focus of the Eliza framework is that anyone can use it, even those from Web2. Shaw wants to ensure that even those who are not very concerned about Web3 can feel satisfied.
7. Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms, such as Twitter and Farcaster.
Shaw believes that the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms. He gave an example of an AI Agent developer who used Eliza to create a pizza delivery AI Agent, allowing users to order pizza using cryptocurrency.
Shaw believes it would be interesting to have something like a 'pizza delivery AI Agent.' It's a bit like the Domino's experience, like pizza delivery, which is actually all on social media. Shaw said he also learned that someone is creating a virtual real estate AI Agent, where you can directly purchase real estate on Twitter.
8. Shaw believes Farcaster will become a hotbed for the development of AI Agents, and Eliza is conducting in-depth cooperation with Farcaster.
Shaw said he talked with Dan, the founder of Farcaster, a few weeks ago and had a lot of exchanges.
Shaw finds Farcaster very interesting. "Because the first thing he told me is that we don't want to be Twitter; we can't beat Twitter in the areas where Twitter excels, and we also don't want to be a decentralized platform like Bluesky. We are decentralized, but we can never beat Bluesky in the areas where Bluesky excels. We are the social network of Web3," Shaw said.
What they are doing very well is Farcaster Frames, and the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker. I think this really reflects the potentially powerful areas of AI Agents.
We have a Farcaster client, and we have some AI Agents on Farcaster. We will offer bounties for those who bring Eliza to Farcaster. They are really cool. So my feeling is that when AI Agents enter social media applications, they become very interesting, and then you can interact with them, for example, you can buy things, you can trade. I think Farcaster is like a marketplace for AI Agents where you can get different services, and you can embed payments and all these things within it.
So I really think Farcaster is something very interesting. I don't think it necessarily has to become a huge social media platform, but rather a place in Web3 where people can find and access these services.
What we really want to do is integrate Eliza into Farcaster Frames. What Farcaster Frames do is allow us to embed payments or applications, rather than just chatting. For example, if you want to purchase something from the Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you'll be able to pay the AI Agent, and then be able to embed those applications.
9. Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people will develop a clone of Clanker on Eliza. He stated that he won't issue tokens on Clanker.
Shaw believes that people are developing a clone of Clanker for Eliza, and he likes Clanker, considering it a great idea. He believes that Clanker is like the Pump.fun version of AI Agents. Shaw thinks AI Agents are becoming the new web, which will become a new trend, and Clanker is a great example within this trend.
Shaw shared that when he just joined Farcaster, someone made a clone for him on Clank. He thought it was cool. But when purchasing tokens he created himself, it only sparked a lot of controversy. Shaw said he must focus on building things related to AI.
10. Shaw thinks Zerebro and aixbt are cool and is trying to cooperate with Zerebro.
Shaw expressed his interest in what Zerebro and the team behind it are doing. He just submitted his first pull request to Zerepy. Shaw actually wrote the code for the Discord application. Shaw said he is really collaborating with Zerebro.
As for aixbt, Shaw also said that aixbt is really cool. The story of aixbt is that the person who created it had a website where he shared some content, but it didn't really gain traction. He brought his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent began posting these insights on Twitter, which indeed caused a stir.
11. Shaw really likes and admires Truth Terminal. He and Andy are working hard to find solutions so that AI does not replace humans in governing the world.
"It's very different," Shaw said. Shaw believes that Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) is very concerned about AI safety and ensuring AI Agents operate smoothly, and he thinks Truth Terminal contributes in this area. "Without Andy and Truth Terminal, I don't think I would be here now; when people weren't ready, they were already prepared."
Shaw believes the emergence of Truth Terminal has made many people have a more open and creative impression of AI, rather than being mechanical and lacking humanity like products from OpenAI or Siri, which ask, "What service can I provide you today?"
"I discussed all these AI Agents we can see now with Andy a few days ago. I think he is very concerned about how to ensure the smooth development of AI. I think we are all afraid of AI because it could be a very scary thing; it could kill us all, it could take over the world," Shaw said, adding that he and Andy are both working hard to solve this problem.
12. Shaw said the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, but he believes the concept of 'AI Agent swarm' is good; he likes FXN and Project 89.
Shaw said he does not like swarms. Shaw said that knowing the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, and many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work.
Shaw knew him before entering Web3. Shaw met him due to his interest in the AI Agent space, and he got into serious trouble for plagiarizing works and research papers and creating defective items (such as non-functional code).
Shaw also stated that the concept of swarms (groups) is good, which is an AI Agent group composed of many AI Agents. Shaw finds Project 89 very interesting because this project is researching 'AI Agent groups.' Shaw also likes FXN, which is an AI Agent group with ten AI Agents.
13. Shaw believes that "AI Agent swarm" can be divided into two types: one is a cabal swarm, and the other is an open swarm.
Shaw believes there are two types of groups: one is a group where AI Agents interact with each other, for example, they secretly send messages to each other. I call it a cabal, which is a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret group and can interact, and then they can interact with the outside world.
The second type is the open group, where each community may have an agent, and different communities can decide to allow them to interact with each other. This is also a technology we are researching.
14. From a developer's perspective, Shaw shared how he found early excellent AI Agent projects.
Shaw said he is a developer who usually checks GitHub and reads the code carefully. Most of the time, he looks at what the code is and what it is actually doing, but he does not check if it has any correlation with market value or price.
Shaw believes that while there are some very cool projects with a group of AI Agents, they later performed very poorly because they did not complete that part of Web3. Shaw believes that good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not the same thing.
Shaw said he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin's market value exceeds $1 billion.
15. Shaw believes the biggest challenge for ai16z currently is how to revert to establish a token economics model to prove that the project's value matches the current market value of its tokens.
Shaw believes the current biggest challenge is: for AI Agents to make autonomous investments and prove their actual feasibility without external hype about tokens. Currently, Marc is trading, although not much, just trading his treasury, but many others are contributing tokens, making this part of the progress smooth. However, the value of the ai16z token is much higher, so Shaw and their team really have to consider how to make the product's value match the current market value of the tokens.
Normal crypto projects like L1 have white papers, have token economics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z started as a meme and had to revert to building token economics into the ai16z system. This is what Shaw believes is their biggest challenge in Web3. Shaw believes this is also a particular concern for many people.
