Author: Nancy, PANews
With the continuous improvement of infrastructure and the gradual implementation of application scenarios, the crypto AI Agent ecosystem is becoming increasingly prosperous, presenting a new market development trajectory, with liquidity and user participation constantly rising. In this wave of AI Agent enthusiasm, ai16z and Virtuals Protocol are undoubtedly the two most prominent representative projects, attracting active capital eager to capitalize on their ecosystems.
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 still appears singular, mainly relying on a few leading projects.
According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the overall market value of AI Agent has reached $11.68 billion, with a growth rate of nearly 39.1% over the past 7 days. This growth trend indicates the rapid expansion of the AI Agent ecosystem in the cryptocurrency market.
In terms of ecosystem scale, the entire crypto AI Agent exhibits a clear head effect, mainly dominated by the two projects, Virtuals and ai16z. Specifically, the ecological market value of Virtuals reaches $5.01 billion, while ai16z stands at $1.63 billion, together accounting for 56.8% of the AI Agent market share, with other projects' market values totaling about $170 million. This also indicates that the current growth and development of AI Agent largely depend on the construction of these two leading projects.
At the same time, from a type perspective, the market value of Virtuals exceeds that of customized AI Agents, which stands at $4.67 billion, while the cumulative market value of other categories reaches $1.8 billion.
From the on-chain distribution perspective, Base and Solana are the two main battlegrounds for AI Agent. Specifically, the market value of AI Agent on Base is approximately $5.76 billion, while on Solana it is $5.47 billion, collectively contributing 96.1% of the overall market, with other on-chain projects accumulating only $920 million, further indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem is still in its nascent stage.
Although Base and Solana are comparably matched in market scale for AI Agents, their ecological compositions differ significantly. The main project in the Base ecosystem is Virtuals, with 86.9% of the projects coming from this ecosystem. In contrast, ai16z 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 with significant market concentration.
With the rise of Virtuals and ai16z, their ecosystem 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, covering more than 1,400 tokens. Among these tokens, only 3 have a market value exceeding $1 million, which are ELIZA, fxn, and degenai, collectively accounting for 84.3% of the overall market value; there are 6 tokens with asset sizes between $100,000 and $1 million, while the market values of the remaining tokens are below $100,000. This distribution indicates a relatively concentrated characteristic in the token composition of ai16z, with a few high-value tokens dominating the overall asset size, while most tokens have relatively dispersed market values, 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 recently it has been widely discussed due to its market value exceeding that of the star AI project Bittensor (TAO). Nevertheless, there is also a certain structural imbalance within the Virtuals ecosystem.
According to Virtuals' official website, as of December 30, there are approximately 510 projects within the Virtuals ecosystem. Among them, 4 projects have a market value exceeding $10 million, namely AIXBT, G.A.M.E, Luna, and VaderAI, accounting for 19.2% of the overall ecosystem; there are 99 projects valued between $1 million and $10 million, while about 60% of the remaining projects have a market value below $100,000. The overall projects in the Virtuals ecosystem have gained more market recognition, but there are still certain concentration issues in its ecosystem development.
Regarding the different development paths of AI Agents for ai16z and Virtuals, Web3 independent 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 tokens, it results in a lack of reasonable evaluation models for its entire family of tokens, preventing them from forming a collective force in the short term. Nevertheless, this will be resolved after a systematic Tokenomics is established. Meanwhile, each member of the ai16z family displays unique capabilities, with the momentum coming from the developer community. The first thing founder Shaw aims to do is lead the scattered family into a super open-source growth flywheel driven by a technology open-source community.
In a recent interview with PANews, Shaw revealed that ai16z will announce a new token economics proposal around January 1, 2025, which includes LP pairing mechanisms, DeFi function integration, and more.
Comparison between Virtuals and ai16z, Source: @0xgangWhat
In contrast, Virtuals is relatively closed. Haotian pointed out that Virtuals has taken an 'Apple-style' ecological expansion approach, resembling an AI Agent 'star-making factory.' Since Virtuals had a complete token economics early on, users need to stake VIRTUAL tokens to create AI Agents, and purchasing new AI Agent tokens requires consuming VIRTUAL tokens. Therefore, the more AI Agents issued on Virtuals, the greater the demand for Virtuals tokens, naturally generating a positive growth flywheel effect. However, Virtuals' emphasis on asset issuance platforms, while providing a standard AI Agent framework, may lead to considerable homogenization among AI Agents on the platform. The asset issuance and light technological ecological breakthrough of Virtuals essentially reflects the inherent limitations of a closed ecosystem.
From pure MEME to on-chain applications, AI Agents are innovating the market operation model.
The hype surrounding Virtuals and ai16z reflects the increasing focus on AI Agents, and is also an important manifestation of the evolution of MEME development.
"AI is the main theme of human technological and productivity enhancement for the next 20 years, which can be integrated into all Crypto categories, including DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and Desci. During this rapid enhancement period, a large number of new applications and technologies will emerge, all of which can be applied in Crypto," believes crypto KOL 0xWizard. He thinks that combining AI with new targets may recreate a new on-chain asset market value, and even recreate a total cryptocurrency market value.
"From the initial pure MEME like GOAT, to interactive AI Agents, then to on-chain funds like ai16z, and finally new asset issuance platforms like Virtual and Spore, each step brings us closer to applications. The essence of this on-chain market trend is that new 'application projects' bypass exchanges and VCs, directly achieving profit redistribution through the model of issuing new assets on-chain. Meanwhile, project parties do not need to curry favor with VCs, compete for resources, or pay tolls to exchanges; they can directly present themselves on-chain to see if the market responds positively," crypto KOL @Michael_Liu93 pointed out.
Haotian also believes that the environment has changed, and the logic of market value capture is also changing, mainly reflected in the following points: (1) transitioning from infrastructure stacks that previously detached from market demands to using AI Agent applications to validate market needs; (2) previous VC funding rounds have led to increasingly narrow secondary profit space, whereas now projects can be built in the form of open-source Public Goods to directly finance the secondary market, allowing AI Agents to manage assets independently, bringing greater imaginative space to projects; (3) past airdrop methods to acquire early users and traffic have created subsequent operational pressure; using MEME-type secondary launches may better suit continuously growing Tokenomics (LP fees, trading taxes, reserved share releases, etc.); (4) after breaking the endgame of listing on centralized exchanges, there will gradually be a tendency towards decentralized exchanges, increasing the probability for quality project parties to achieve grassroots success; (5) achieving new market operating rules, projects that do not integrate with the community and do not always focus on frontline products will find it hard to emerge.
