Author: Nancy, PANews
With the gradual improvement of infrastructure and the gradual landing of application scenarios, the crypto AI Agent ecosystem is becoming increasingly prosperous, presenting a new market development trajectory, with liquidity and user participation continuously rising. In this surge of AI Agents, ai16z and Virtuals Protocol are undoubtedly the two most representative projects, attracting various capital eager to mine opportunities.
ai16z and Virtuals dominate the AI Agent market, contributing over half of the market share.
Despite the rapid rise of the AI Agent ecosystem in the crypto market, attracting significant attention and capital, its market structure remains singular, primarily relying on the promotion of a few leading projects.
According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the overall market cap of AI Agents has reached $11.68 billion, with a nearly 39.1% increase over the past seven days. This growth trend indicates the rapid growth momentum of the AI Agent ecosystem in the crypto market.
From the perspective of ecological scale, the entire crypto AI Agent ecosystem exhibits a significant head effect, mainly dominated by the two projects, Virtuals and ai16z. Specifically, the ecological market cap of Virtuals reaches $5.01 billion, while ai16z stands at $1.63 billion, together accounting for 56.8% of the AI Agent market share. This also means that the current growth and development of AI Agents rely more on the construction of these two leading projects.
At the same time, in terms of types, the market cap of Virtuals exceeds that of customized AI Agents, which stands at $4.67 billion, while the cumulative market cap of other classifications reaches $1.8 billion.
From the perspective of on-chain distribution, Base and Solana are the two main battlefields for AI Agents. Among them, the market cap of AI Agents on Base is approximately $5.76 billion, while the market cap on Solana is $5.47 billion, together contributing 96.1% of the overall market, while the market cap of other on-chain projects only totals $920 million, further indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem is still in its nascent stage.
Although Base and Solana are comparable in the market size of AI Agents, their ecological compositions differ significantly. The main project of the Base ecosystem is Virtuals, which accounts for 86.9% of projects originating from this ecosystem. In contrast, ai16z only occupies nearly one-third of the market share on Solana, indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem on Solana is richer and more diverse compared to Base.
Presenting different ecological development paths, but market concentration is evident in both.
With the rise of Virtuals and ai16z, their ecological projects have also become the focus of market investors' attention and bets.
According to data from daos.fun, as of December 30, the net asset value (NAV) of ai16z is approximately $23.355 million, encompassing over 1,400 tokens. Among these tokens, only 3 have a market cap exceeding one million dollars, namely ELIZA, fxn, and degenai, whose cumulative market cap accounts for 84.3% of the total; there are 6 tokens with a market cap between $100,000 and $1 million, while the remaining tokens all have a market cap below $100,000. This distribution indicates that the token portfolio of ai16z is relatively concentrated, with a few high-value tokens dominating the overall asset scale, while the majority of tokens have a more dispersed market cap, showing that this ecosystem is still in a highly differentiated state.
Compared to ai16z, the quality of projects in the Virtuals ecosystem is relatively higher, and it has recently garnered attention for surpassing the market cap of the star AI project Bittensor (TAO). However, there is still some structural imbalance within the Virtuals ecosystem.
The official website of Virtuals shows that as of December 30, there are approximately 510 projects in the Virtuals ecosystem. Among them, there are 4 projects with a market cap exceeding $100 million, namely AIXBT, G.A.M.E, Luna, and VaderAI, accounting for 19.2% of the overall ecosystem; there are 99 projects with a market cap between $1 million and $100 million, while about 60% of the remaining projects have a market cap below $100,000. Overall, the projects in the Virtuals ecosystem have gained more market recognition, but there is a certain degree of concentration issue in its ecological development.
Regarding the different AI Agent development paths of ai16z and Virtuals, independent Web3 researcher Haotian previously pointed out that ai16z is more open-source, resembling an 'Android-style' developer ecosystem alliance. However, due to the extreme lack of token economics for ai16z's tokens, it leads to a lack of reasonable evaluation models for its entire token suite, making it difficult to form synergy in the short term. However, all of this will be resolved after a systematic Tokenomics is established. At the same time, each member of the ai16z token suite has its unique capabilities, and the potential lies in the strength of the developer community. The first thing founder Shaw aims to do is to lead the scattered token suite into a super open-source growth flywheel driven by a technology-driven community.
Recently, in an interview with PANews, Shaw revealed that ai16z will announce a new token economics proposal around January 1, 2025, which will include LP pairing mechanisms, DeFi function integration, and other contents.
Comparison between Virtuals and ai16z, source: @0xgangWhat
In contrast, Virtuals is relatively closed. Haotian points out that Virtuals has taken an 'Apple-like' ecological expansion route, akin to an AI Agent 'star-making factory.' Because Virtuals had a complete token economics from early on, users need to stake VIRTUAL tokens to create AI Agents, and purchasing new AI Agent tokens requires spending VIRTUAL tokens. Therefore, as more AI Agents are issued on Virtuals, the demand for VIRTUAL tokens increases, naturally creating a positive growth flywheel effect. However, as Virtuals focuses on being an asset issuance platform with a standard AI Agent framework, it leads to a heavier homogeneity among AI Agents on the platform. The emphasis on asset issuance rather than technical breakthroughs is, in essence, a limitation of a closed ecosystem.
From pure MEME to on-chain applications, AI Agents are innovating market operation models
The hype surrounding Virtuals and ai16z reflects the increasing attention to AI Agents and is also an important manifestation of the evolution of MEME development.
"AI is the main theme for enhancing human technology and productivity in the next 20 years, and it can be integrated into all Crypto categories, including DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and Desci, etc. During the high-speed growth period, it will bring a large number of new applications and new technologies that can be applied to Crypto." Crypto KOL 0xWizard believes that combining new assets with AI may recreate an on-chain asset market value and even reconstruct the total market value of crypto.
"From the initial pure MEME like GOAT, to chat-capable AI Agents, then to on-chain funds like ai16z, and then to new asset issuance platforms like Virtual and Spore, each step is getting closer to application. The essence of this on-chain market trend is that new 'application projects' bypass exchanges and VCs, directly realizing the redistribution of benefits through the model of issuing new assets on-chain. At the same time, project parties no longer need to curry favor with VCs, compete for resources, or pay tolls to exchanges; they can simply take a stroll on-chain to see if the market is willing to buy in." Crypto KOL @Michael_Liu93 points out.
Haotian also believes that the environment has changed and the logic of capturing market value is also changing, mainly reflected in the following points: (1) From the past, many infrastructures detached from market demand to using AI Agent applications to validate market demand; (2) Previous VC funding rounds led to increasingly narrow secondary profit space; now building projects in the form of open-source Public Goods can directly target secondary market financing, and allowing AI Agents to autonomously manage assets can bring greater imaginative space to projects; (3) In the past, airdrop methods to acquire early users and traffic have brought subsequent operational pressure; launching in a MEME-like secondary manner can suit a continuously growing Tokenomics (LP fees, transaction taxes, reserved share releases, etc.); (4) After breaking the CEX listing conclusion, the trend will gradually lean towards DEX as the main platform, with higher quality projects having a greater chance of a 'grassroots reversal'; (5) Achieving new market operation rules, where projects that do not integrate with the community and do not always focus on frontline products are unlikely to emerge.
