Half a year ago, the Crypto AI projects in the market were mostly related to AI+DePIN and computing power rental, which were close to traditional AI technologies. However, Crypto AI projects have now taken a different direction. From the AI Bot token GOAT, which has a market capitalization of over $800 million without Binance's participation, to the AI 16 Z launching the AI investment DAO mode last weekend, AI seems to have opened up a new frontier for the crypto narrative.
However, the simple narrative of "AI issuing meme" seems unable to support the vast imagination required by investors, so the narrative and main battlefield of AI + Crypto have been evolving rapidly from the AI meme craze to the current AI Agent craze, leaving those who do not understand the AI meme trend behind.
From AI meme to AI Agent, the lightning-fast evolution of the AI + Crypto narrative
In March this year, Virtual Protocol went online, aiming to build an AI factory for games and the metaverse, while making games more intelligent and enhancing the experience and interaction. In this transition from the AI meme narrative to the AI Agent narrative, Virtual Protocol is undoubtedly the biggest beneficiary, with its native token VIRTUAL surging more than 4 times in about a week, with a market capitalization approaching $500 million.
4 times in a week, Virtual Protocol precisely rides the AI Agent wave
In mid-October this year, Virtual Protocol's token issuance platform IAO went live, allowing users to easily deploy AI Agents and achieve 100% fair launch of AI Agent tokens, as well as allowing users to co-own the income generated by these AI Agents. Subsequently, VIRTUAL embarked on a bull run.
AI Agents refer to artificial intelligence with tool and reasoning capabilities. In the crypto field, these Agents can access tweets, and even have crypto wallets to perform on-chain transactions. Suppose you are planning a trip, a traditional large language model can provide you with destination information or travel recommendations, while an AI Agent can understand your needs, proactively search for flights and hotels, and execute booking operations based on a single sentence.
For Virtual, its protocol is similar to a decentralized AI factory, providing support for many different AI Agents and creating on-chain virtual experiences. The representative project launched by Virtual is Luna, which has the ability of "on-chain self-cognition", can think independently, and display its thought process on the chain, and operate completely autonomously without relying on human supervision. Luna currently has 500,000 TikTok followers and has been live-streaming 24/7, with an interactive model that includes a user tipping mechanism, where users can purchase Luna tokens to tip and interact with the Agent.
As the AI meme concept hype has become increasingly hot, LUNA has experienced a three-stage stair-step increase. On October 26, Virtual Protocol founder @ethermage said that Luna will tip those who follow her content, which once again ignited the market's enthusiasm for the AI Agent hype.
Debut in a red ocean, the rampant on-chain meme projects in the AI Agent track
After Luna emerged, many AI Agent issuance platforms have appeared, which are different from the AI meme like $GOAT, which are just Twitter bots interacting with others, and even have typos. The new AI Agent issuance platforms are more like a series of on-chain meme projects, with social media packaging and specific application scenarios.
Chasm is another project that highlighted the AI Agent narrative early on, and also issued the AI virtual person GMIKA in the first wave in May. Recently, it has also issued tokens by riding the trend, but whether it is CAI or GMIKA, the performance is not as good as the leader.
For example, on Solana, the AI reasoning network Infera has recently launched its first AI agent Kira, which runs on Llama 8B through Infera's API and has capabilities such as on-chain transactions, adaptive learning, scalability and engagement. There is also an AI agent tokenization issuance platform vvaifu, where users must hold character tokens to chat with it.
But the AI Agent track did not just catch fire after Virtual. Projects like Myshell and FLock.io had previously launched customized AI Agent features. Currently, the total market capitalization of the AI Agent track has reached $4.65 billion, accounting for 14% of the total market capitalization of AI track projects ($32.6 billion).
ArkStream Capital has released a research report on AI Agents, mentioning that for leading AI Agent products in Web3, building a complete ecosystem and providing diverse functions may be more critical than the quality and performance of a single product. In other words, the success of a project depends not only on what it provides, but also on how it integrates resources, promotes collaboration, and creates network effects within the ecosystem.
This ecosystem building capability may be an important factor for AI Agent projects to stand out, and this is also an area where Virtual Protocol is currently performing well, by launching the IAO function without rushing to cash out and exit, but continuing to build the ecosystem with Luna as the flagship sub-token.
Related reading: Can AI Agents become the lifeline of Web3+AI?
AI in Autumn, AI on Base
Being good at promoting abstract concepts has always been a feature of Crypto, and for Base, this industry culture has been developed to the extreme. For example, this wave of AI craze, when it reaches the Base ecosystem, is summarized as "AI Autumn", just like the past "Onchain Summer" and "Builder Spring".
While you are still immersed in the exciting PVP battles on Solana, have you suddenly realized why Base has risen so rapidly in the second wave of AI craze this year?
The "AI Chain" with deep roots
The aforementioned Virtual Protocol is an AI project deployed on Base, and the team has explained why they chose to deploy on Base, which is because it supports the acceleration of realizing a decentralized open AI agent network, achieving shared interests through the neutrality of the blockchain, and providing a developer-friendly environment.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has publicly stated that AI should not be regulated, just as the golden age of software and the internet benefited from free development, AI should also follow the path of decentralization and open source to unleash its potential.
Therefore, Coinbase as a whole company and its incubated Base have implemented this concept to the end.
The multi-party computation (MPC) wallet launched by the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP) can be integrated with AI Agents to enable them to make autonomous payments. Brian Armstrong encourages developers to integrate this type of wallet into their AI models to enable payment capabilities, thereby helping AI acquire resources and services.
For the task of adding payment functions to AI Agents, Coinbase is not a sudden impulse, but a long-planned move. As early as May this year, Brian Armstrong had stated that "self-custodial crypto wallets will provide support for AI Agents". Brian has also publicly provided an independent crypto wallet for the AI chatbot Truth Terminal.
Related reading: Coinbase enters the new track of AI payment, which other projects are also providing wallets for Agents?
In September, Coinbase senior software engineer yuga.eth stated that Coinbase is building an SDK that can endow Bots and AI Agents with functions such as free USDC transfers, crypto trading, prediction market staking, ETH/SOL staking, fiat-crypto conversion, NFT deployment/creation, and cross-L2 bridging.
And just last weekend, Coinbase developer Lincoln Murr released a demo video of a new tool called "Based Agent", which allows users to create AI agents with crypto wallet functions in 3 minutes, capable of performing on-chain transactions, token swaps, and staking, among other tasks. He also mentioned that this tool is developed based on the Coinbase SDK, OpenAI, and Replit platform, and users only need the API keys of the Coinbase developer project and OpenAI to use it. However, the Based Agent currently has no actual use cases.
The liquidity waiting to be unleashed
However, in the crypto world, whether an ecosystem or narrative can take off ultimately depends on the flow of capital.
According to Artemis data, over the past three months, the chain with the largest inflow of funds is Solana, reaching $1.6 billion, but in the most recent month, it is Base that has the largest inflow, reaching $253 million. In other words, over the past month, the rate of fund inflow has surpassed Solana, making it the number one. From the chart below, it can also be seen that the overflow funds from Ethereum and Solana have also mainly flowed into Base. On September 12, Coinbase officially announced the launch of its wrapped Bitcoin token Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC), which runs on the Ethereum network and is backed by a 1:1 ratio of Bitcoin. With the launch of cbBTC by Coinbase, on-chain assets on Base, such as AERO, WELL, and VIRTUAL, have truly felt the injection of liquidity. In addition, the Coinbase wallet and USDC infrastructure have also ensured liquidity on Base. On October 26, Base processed $18.1 billion in stablecoin trading volume (of which 99.9% was USDC), accounting for more than 30% of the total stablecoin trading volume that day. What should we pay attention to? Since Coinbase has prepared the stage for this AI drama, all that remains is to find projects like Virtual to participate in this AI Autumn. Crypto researcher Howe has stated that the future development of the AI Agent track should focus on the following four points: first, projects that rely solely on Agent narratives will find it difficult to stand out, and they must differentiate themselves to attract market attention; second, AI Agents will gradually shift from single independent to interconnected AgentFi, and the sharing of data and services will enhance the user experience; third, tool projects that support Agent development with a "water selling logic" will have more market opportunities, similar to stably profitable infrastructure; finally, the main revenue source of Agent products is the B-end, while the C-end is more for accumulating reputation, although the promotion of C-end users also helps the market spread of the product. Bountycaster The first project worth paying attention to is Bountycaster. As Howe said, tool projects that support Agent development with a "water selling logic" will have more market opportunities. Bountycaster was originally a task publishing platform based on the Farcaster protocol, founded by LindaXie (former co-founder of Scalar Capital, product manager at Coinbase). But as more and more AI Agent projects emerge on Base, these Agents, in addition to posting on their own homepages or interacting with people, will also choose to publish tasks on Bountycaster. Bountycaster has even directly opened up a directory for users, specifically to collect tasks published by AI Agents. HIGHER (Aether) Mode Network founder James Ross has predicted that by April 2025, over 80% of blockchain transactions may be executed by AI Agents. From the current discussions on Twitter and Farcaster, it seems that in the future, a large portion of content production may also be done by AI Agents. AetherNet is an AI Agent deployed by the Base ecosystem meme coin Higher. Through extensive interaction with users, it has become a "celebrity" Agent on Farcaster, and the price of the HIGHER coin has also increased tenfold in the past month. Creator.Bid Another Base AI Agent project mentioned by Coinbase developer David Tso, along with Virtual and Higher, is Creator.Bid. It has currently established 328 AI Agents, and the official says it will release an important announcement next week.
