Shaw shared his observations and evaluations of 10 promising AI Agent projects.
Written by: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
On December 22, 2024, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill landed in Shanghai. That evening, members of the 706 community (one of the largest youth communities in China), along with developers and investors from the crypto community, hosted a welcome dinner for him. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a chat before going to a restaurant, and then took Shaw to his first meetup in China. I can say I witnessed Shaw's entire itinerary in Shanghai.
Shaw generously shared with us the next focus of ai16z and Eliza's work during this process, describing the future landscape of AI Agents and providing specific analysis and evaluation of over a dozen well-known AI Agent projects. This allowed me and my companions at the gathering to gain a deeper understanding of the AI Agent track.
Looking back, Shaw and the ai16z he founded have only been famous in the industry for about a month. As a founder of a startup project, he has gained widespread and eager attention from many investors, developers, and media in the crypto industry. Why is that? I think this may be related to the explosive trend of AI Agents in the crypto industry, and ai16z is precisely one of the core projects leading this wave of AI Agent meme narrative.
Although the narrative of crypto AI Agents has only started for a month, it is already considered the hottest topic in current discussions in the crypto industry, with many crypto practitioners believing that AI Agents will become one of the main narratives in this round of the crypto cycle. And ai16z is the most well-known project among them; this project not only established the world's first VC AI Agent - ai16z DAO, and the first well-known open-source AI Agent crypto framework - Eliza, but also gained the attention and recognition of Marc Andreessen, the founder of the well-known American venture capital a16z. As a result, ai16z's token reached a market cap of 1 billion dollars within a month, and related tokens such as DegenAI, Eliza, aiPool, etc., have also received widespread attention from the community.
As this important narrative emerged, crypto practitioners were eager to know the true state of the current AI Agent track. Is it a bubble or real application? What are the latest developments in the US, and what will the next steps for AI Agents in the crypto industry be? To this end, I will summarize the exchanges between Shaw and myself over the past couple of days into fifteen important pieces of information, which include his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is an AI Agent serial entrepreneur living in San Francisco and was also 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 next launch a product that combines AI Agents with games, which is already in the works. Shaw's focus on AI Agents began in the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. Shaw works in the AI field, and every company he has been in has strong AI elements, including developing AI Agent platforms and AI Agents in 3D worlds. Shaw has also founded several AI-related companies, but early projects did not achieve widespread success.
2. Shaw stated that several games based on the Eliza framework are about to launch.
Shaw stated that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where you will own a pet monkey that you can tell what to do. It might listen to you, or maybe it won't. This game is interesting because this kind of game is not possible without AI Agents, and your goal is to take care of your virtual pet like a parent.
There are several games using Eliza set to be released soon, 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 that has a name almost identical to the well-known investor Marc Andreessen, is currently at a very early stage (only has tweeted once). Shaw said his original intention was to create it as a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The function of this product is that if humans recommend buying a token, it will consider purchasing it. To prevent malicious actors from recommending things it should not buy, it will build a trust mechanism called 'trust market.' The idea of the trust mechanism is that if you recommend a good token, it will place virtual orders for everyone, but not actual purchases. It ultimately only listens to trading advice from those who provide it with consistently very good trading information.
4. Marc Andreessen has followed several of Shaw's online accounts, but they have never met in person; Shaw knows some people from a16z.
Marc Andreessen is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the US venture capital scene; he has followed and retweeted ai16z projects, but Shaw stated they have never met offline. 'I have been an AI Agent developer for a while; he has followed several of my accounts, but we have never met privately,' Shaw said.
According to Shaw, the CTO of a16z's cryptocurrency department, Eddy Lazzarin, sent a message to Shaw saying he has been in the project's Discord channel since day one but said nothing. Shaw asked him if he liked this AI Agent. He said, 'No, I'm just watching it, like we're monitoring you.'
5. Shaw stated that he does not hold Eliza tokens and will never issue independent tokens for the Eliza framework in the future.
Shaw stated he personally holds two tokens, ai16z and DegenAI, and keeps them in his wallet. However, he does not own Eliza tokens and will not issue independent tokens for the Eliza framework.
'The ai16z members don't want us to make another token, so I will never do that,' Shaw said. At the same time, he also stated that ai16z holds 10% of Eliza tokens. We support the capitalized Eliza and the team behind Eliza; he said it is an 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 heart: 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 Web2 users. Shaw wants to ensure that even those who are not very focused on Web3 can feel satisfied.
Shot at 706 Shanghai Youth Space - Dweller
7. Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms like Twitter and Farcaster.
Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms; he gave an example of an AI Agent developer using Eliza to create a pizza delivery AI Agent so that users can order pizza with cryptocurrency.
Shaw believes it would be interesting if there was something like a 'pizza delivery AI Agent'. It's a bit like the experience of Domino's, such as pizza delivery, actually happening on social media. Shaw said he also learned that someone is making a virtual real estate AI Agent where you can directly purchase real estate on Twitter.
8. Shaw believes Farcaster will become a hotbed for AI Agent development, and Eliza is deeply collaborating with Farcaster.
Shaw said he spoke with Dan, the founder of Farcaster, a few weeks ago and had a lot of exchanges.
Shaw believes Farcaster is very interesting. 'Because the first thing he told me is that we don't want to become Twitter; we can't beat Twitter in areas where Twitter excels, and we also don't want to become a decentralized platform like Bluesky; we are decentralized, but we can never beat Bluesky in areas where Bluesky excels; we are the social network of Web3,' Shaw said.
What they did very well was Farcaster Frames and the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker; I think that really reflects the field where AI Agents could be very powerful.
We have a Farcaster client, and we have some AI Agents on Farcaster. We will provide 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, like you can buy things, you can trade. I think Farcaster is like an AI Agent marketplace where you can obtain different services, and you can embed payments and all those things.
So I really think Farcaster is a very interesting thing; I think it doesn't necessarily have to become a huge social media platform but rather become a place where Web3 people can find and access these services.
What we really want to do is integrate Eliza into Farcaster Frames. What Farcaster Frames does is allow us to embed payments or applications instead of just chatting. For example, if you want to buy something from an Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you will be able to pay AI Agents and then be able to embed these applications.
9. Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people will develop a clone version of Clanker using Eliza, stating he will not issue a token on Clanker.
Shaw believes people are developing a clone version of Clanker for Eliza; Shaw likes Clanker and thinks it's a great idea. He also believes Clanker is like a Pump.fun version of an AI Agent. Shaw thinks AI Agents are becoming a new web, which will become a new trend, and Clanker is a good example of this trend.
Shaw shared that when he first joined Farcaster, someone made one for him on Clank. He thought that was cool. But when buying tokens he made himself, it would only cause 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 collaborate with Zerebro.
Shaw expressed his interest in what Zerebro and the team behind it are doing. He just submitted the first pull request to Zerepy. Shaw actually wrote the code for the Discord application. Shaw said he is indeed collaborating with Zerebro.
And for aixbt, Shaw also said aixbt is really cool; the story of aixbt is that the creator of it has a website where he shares some content but did not really gain traction. He brings his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent started 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 to ensure that AI will not replace humans in running the world.
'It's very different,' Shaw said. Shaw believes Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) cares very much about AI safety and ensures that AI Agents run smoothly; he thinks Truth Terminal has contributed in this regard. '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's impressions of AI more open and creative, rather than being mechanical and soulless like OpenAI products or Siri's offerings, asking 'What service can I provide for you today?'
'Andy and I discussed all these AI Agents we can see right now a few days ago; I think he cares a lot about ensuring 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 he and Andy are both working hard to solve this problem.
Shot at 706 Shanghai Youth Space - Dweller
12. Shaw said the creator of swarms tokens is a very famous scammer, but he thinks the concept of 'AI Agent swarm' is good; he likes FXN and Project 89.
Shaw said he does not like swarms. Shaw said knowing the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer; many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work.
Shaw knew him before entering Web3. Shaw met him because he was focused on the AI Agent space; he got into serious trouble for plagiarizing works and research papers and producing defective things (like non-working code).
Shaw also stated that the concept of swarms is good, which is a group of many AI Agents. Shaw thinks Project 89 is interesting because this project is researching 'AI Agent groups'. Shaw also likes FXN, which is a group of ten AI Agents.
13. Shaw believes '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 of AI Agents interacting with each other, such as secretly sending messages to each other. I call it a cabal, which is a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret society where they can interact, and then they can interact with the outside world.
The second type is an open group, where every 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. Shaw shared from a developer's perspective how he finds early excellent AI Agent projects.
Shaw said he is a developer; he usually goes to check GitHub and reads the code carefully. Most of the time, he will look at what this code is and what it actually does, but he will not check whether it has any relation to market value or price.
Shaw believes some very cool projects had a group of AI Agents, but later they did very poorly because they did not complete the Web3 part. Shaw believes good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not the same thing.
Shaw said he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin has a market cap of over 1 billion dollars.
15. Shaw believes the biggest challenge for ai16z at present is how to go back and establish a token economics model to prove that the project's value matches the current market value of the tokens.
Shaw believes the biggest challenge currently is: for AI Agents to engage in autonomous investment and prove its practical viability without external hype for tokens. Currently, Marc is trading, although not much, just trading his treasury, but many others are contributing tokens, making this part progress smoothly. However, the value of ai16z tokens is much higher, so Shaw and their team must seriously consider how to make the product's value match the current market value of the tokens.
Normal crypto projects like L1 have white papers, token economics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z started as a meme and had to backtrack to build token economics into the ai16z system. This is what Shaw believes is their biggest challenge in Web3. Shaw thinks this is also a concern for many people.
