Author: Haotian
I. Narrative
The overall trend is undeniable, AI Agent is neither an "asset" nor an "application", but a new paradigm of a large-scale blockchain ecosystem "narrative".
In other words, the arrival of AI Agent is like the DeFi Summer that the blockchain industry experienced in 2020, which will revolve around the issuance, custody, and trading of AI Agent Tokens; infrastructure construction, frameworks, standards, communication, stacking, and SaaS encapsulation; Application development, operations, aggregation, iteration, and implementation, etc., creating a new "bubble" narrative cycle of Build+Speculation.
DeFi has driven the glory of the last bull market, and the three pillars of stablecoins + lending +DeX derivatives have ignited tremendous market vitality. According to incomplete statistics, the total locked value of multi-chain DeFI is 134.6 billion, the circulation of stablecoins has also exceeded 100 billion US dollars, the monthly trading volume of DEX has reached 372.3 billion US dollars, and the lending volume is close to 20 billion US dollars, etc. The market size and ecological importance of the entire DeFi industry are growing at an astonishing rate and are still continuously refreshing these data, not to mention the various chains, applications, MCAP\FDV and other broader data generated by DeFi.
In my opinion, AI Agent will also create a new narrative miracle that may even surpass DeFi, with an imagination space of 200B, 500B? Stop always thinking about a new DeFi Summer 2.0, please keep up with the current AI Agent Summer narrative tide, don't fall behind.
II. Chaos
Based on this logic, let's take a look at the "chaos" in the current AI Agent market:
1) Community battles and competition for dominance among AI MEME such as $GOAT, $FARTCOIN, and $ACT;
2) Disputes over AI Agent framework standards such as $VIRTUAL and $AI16Z;
3) Disputes over derivative infra such as asset issuance and circulation like $VVAIFU and $GRIFFAIN;
4) Disputes over standalone AI Agent applications such as $AIXBT, $AVA, and $BULLY, etc.
You will find that it is still too early, at least the Ethereum chain provided a basic execution framework and standards for the various lending platforms, derivatives, yield farming, and governance tokens that appeared in DeFi, while the AI Agent ecosystem does not even have dedicated infra conditions yet. From the perspective of ecosystem plasticity, the industry narrative opportunities brought by AI Agent are much greater than DeFi.
In other words, these chaotic phenomena are not chaotic. If you are optimistic about the development of the AI Agent narrative, for each sector, as long as the assets have reached a certain market capitalization and have a corresponding user base, they are quality assets before the massive AI Agent narrative explosion, just like the assets that have reached hundreds of billions of FDV like YFI, CRV, UNI, and DYDX in the past.
Of course, confidence does not mean you can mess around, don't forget that in addition to the "Big Aunt", there are also pseudo-value assets like the "Second Aunt" that exist, and these assets always quietly invade your wallet in a more tempting but long-term toxic way.
III. Early Stage
Because it is indeed still in the early stage of the narrative, there is no reason to persuade everyone not to participate in AI MEME that you clearly know are manipulated by conspiracy groups.
After all, no one knows how much wealth effect an early track can unleash, and the main frameworks and standards that appear to be more valuable and have been implemented may also face the possibility of being surpassed by competitors at any time.
IV. Investment Logic
In short, it is difficult to give a clear Alpha discovery logic. I can only share my personal research logic for reference:
1. AI MEME, only consider "leader coins" like $GOAT that have the nature of narrative pioneers, without logic, if you have to say one, it's just like Bitcoin, the consensus coin, gave birth to Ethereum, the smart contract technology delivery coin.
An early MEME in a track, although the speculative attribute is the main one, its role in educating the market and cultivating user awareness cannot be ignored, just like how DOGE popularized cryptocurrencies in the early days.
2. AI Agent infra is very important, and it is undervalued in the long run, such as $ELIZA, which has a rich Github open-source library and a particularly wide range of applications, although it is indeed very early and may be drained by other stronger frameworks and standards at any time, but its absolute advantage of open-source sharing and first-mover advantage is the barrier, and frameworks that are better than it will most likely be on top of it, which may affect its growth height, but will not eliminate it.
We treat ELIZA as the EVM of the AI Agent era, and there will certainly be new frameworks like EVM++ and EVM Compatible to complement it.
3. AI Agent asset issuance, custody, and trading are currently still at the MEME-ized asset issuance narrative level, and we need to lock in platform value rather than be misled by the "junk assets" on the platform.
The logic is simple, the essence of AI Agent is the process of AI scenario value landing based on Crypto incentive mechanisms, and the early infra, applications, protocol frameworks, etc. are not yet mature, how could there be so many AIXBT-level super applications born? What can the convenience of issuing coins bring? Understand it? In the end, it's just a bubble trap to create heat for assets like VIRTUAL and VVAIFU.
Therefore, don't chase AI Agent super applications too much, unless you have absolute information asymmetry, otherwise by the time you see the market cap, the cost performance ratio will not be high, while locking in innovative platform infra is different.
4. There is still a vast blank space in the construction of AI Agent infra, for example, the early framework like ELIZA has only solved the problem of LLM large model and AI Agent dialogue mechanism, and has been applied to scenarios like Twitter and Discord, but it is still mostly the matching of web2 information, when will a version of ELIZA++ come out that can connect the ELIZA framework and web3 trading scenarios based on the public chain paradigm, which is worth looking forward to.
For example, platforms like Virtual and VVAIFU can quickly issue assets, but they still lack a lot in the direction of decentralized asset custody, AMM-style intentional trading, etc. When will the AI Agent+TEE private key management method discussed earlier mature? Can the asset issuance platform extend new gameplay in trading, and come up with more interesting trading gameplay and incentive models?
Also, can there be some chains that build interaction standards for AI Agent, becoming the Cosmos of the AI Agent era, providing standard interoperability capabilities? Or some chains that build modular storage for the permanent Memory of AI Agent, to provide the necessary DA capabilities for AI Agent? There are also some AI Agent visualization tools, execution engines, modular combination encapsulation services, etc.
With these technically and market-driven supporting infra coming out, will you still be anxiously guarding a bunch of MEME that you don't understand?
Conclusion
As for where the various layer1, high-performance chains, cross-chain infra, chain abstraction, DA composite chains, layer2, reStaking, etc. that have been built based on the smart contract paradigm in the past will go? In addition to the original infra landing application PMF delivery realization problem, a breakthrough point is the new concept of "riding the AI Agent narrative".
So, which chain can stand out to provide some communication protocols, DA, application development and other service capabilities for AI Agent, is worth paying attention to. Of course, there will certainly be some chains that are purely riding the concept, but they are still better than the chains that are stuck in their old ways.
In any case, please lock in the AI Agent track and welcome the arrival of this epic bull market main upward wave.
