In the digital economy, AI agents are transitioning from their traditional role as tools to becoming important economic drivers. They can not only autonomously analyze data and optimize decisions, but also drive user engagement and revenue growth by executing complex tasks. These agents are widely applied in areas such as gaming, social media, and financial services, creating rich personalized and interactive experiences. Their rise signifies a shift of artificial intelligence from passive service to active participation, injecting new vitality into the digital economy. Blockchain technology has played a key role in this process. Through its decentralized architecture, blockchain provides a secure, autonomous, and transparent operating environment for AI systems. It allows agents to manage digital assets on-chain, achieve autonomous operations and immutable records, while ensuring the trust foundation for multi-party collaboration through smart contracts. This combination not only enhances the functionality of AI agents, but also offers new business models and incentive mechanisms for developers and users. Virtuals Protocol is an important platform for driving the development of AI agents and decentralized applications. By introducing a shared ownership model, Virtuals Protocol transforms AI agents into community assets, enabling users to collectively participate in the development, operation, and revenue distribution of the agents. According to the official announcement, The First will list the VIRTUAL/USDT trading pair on its spot market on December 19, 2024, at 16:00 (UTC+-8). Through The First platform, Virtuals Protocol is expected to attract more attention and accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
I. What is Virtuals Protocol?
Virtuals Protocol is a protocol launched in 2024 that deeply integrates artificial intelligence and the metaverse, aiming to completely transform the way of virtual interaction by creating hyper-personalized and immersive experiences. The core of Virtuals Protocol is to integrate advanced AI agents into digital environments such as games, metaworlds, and online interactions, leveraging a distributed architecture to enhance creativity, diversity, and trustworthiness, ensuring virtual participation is innovative and fair. Virtuals Protocol will further enhance the sense of immersion and uniqueness through generative AI and multimodal outputs (text, sound, and visual effects), making each virtual experience a one-of-a-kind journey. This approach not only elevates the user experience, but also creates new economic opportunities for developers, creators, and users in the ecosystem. The shared ownership model of Virtuals Protocol is a highlight, allowing users to invest in and co-own AI-based virtual assets such as AI companions and virtual influencers, which are highly valuable on platforms like Roblox and TikTok. In this way, Virtuals Protocol encourages shared responsibility and community ownership, distributing the benefits to all participants.
II. How does Virtuals Protocol work?
Virtuals Protocol operates on a decentralized ecosystem that encourages the creation and use of AI agents (VIRTUAL). These agents integrate various core modules, including cognitive core, speech and sound core, and visual core, enabling complex multimodal interactions. Virtuals Protocol is an advanced framework aimed at managing and coordinating the functionality of AI agents used in various consumer applications. It is equipped with a powerful infrastructure that supports external applications' interaction with AI agents through the "Agent Prompt Interface". This interface acts as a bridge, allowing AI agents to communicate and execute tasks seamlessly. Developers can integrate the functionality of Virtuals Protocol into their applications through a series of APIs and SDKs, enabling dynamic AI-driven capabilities. This bidirectional interface not only facilitates real-time data flows, but also enables AI agents to execute complex tasks, respond to user interactions, and perform computations efficiently.
Through these capabilities, VIRTUAL can act like characters in IP, execute specific tasks, and even serve as digital versions of personal assistants, enhancing the entertainment and utility of virtual spaces. The ecosystem includes two main layers:
- Protocol Layer: Provides the underlying AI models and algorithms for developers to access and build upon. Contributors provide data and model development, while validators ensure the quality and authenticity of these inputs.
- DApp Layer: Focuses on the practical application of AI models, enabling decentralized applications to seamlessly integrate VIRTUAL. Developer-friendly software development kits (SDKs) simplify the process of integrating advanced AI functionalities into various DApp environments.
Economic incentives play a crucial role in supporting the development of the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem. The efforts of contributors and validators are rewarded with VIRTUAL tokens, ensuring a continuous flow of high-quality data and models. At the same time, the protocol's revenue from DApps is used to buy back VIRTUAL tokens, maintaining the stability and long-term growth of the token value.
III. Virtuals Protocol's Technical Core
- Generative AI: Generates text, sound, and visuals, bringing deeper and more meaningful experiences.
- Multimodal Output: Enhances the immersion and vividness of virtual interactions through cross-media capabilities.
- Distributed Ecosystem: Ensures the high quality and trustworthiness of data and resources through a decentralized architecture and parallel mechanisms.
IV. Virtuals Protocol's Founding Team and Financing Information
The co-founders of Virtuals Protocol are from BCG and Imperial College, with long-term involvement in the crypto field. The AI team is composed of PhDs from MIT, Harvard, and Cambridge. More importantly, this team has persevered through the bear market. Since transitioning from a gaming guild in December 2021, they have experimented with a venture studio model in 2022, unexpectedly accumulating AI talent and infrastructure, and ultimately pivoted to consumer AI and crypto integration in December 2023, undergoing a brand transformation.
V. Virtuals Protocol Token Economics
The $VIRTUAL token is the core currency of the Virtuals Protocol, used for all proxy token transactions. It runs on the Base chain based on the Ethereum Layer2. If users want to purchase VIRTUAL Agents tokens within the ecosystem, they need to first exchange for VIRTUAL and then use it to make the purchase. The First will launch $VIRTUAL today, and users can trade it directly on the platform, avoiding the complex trading process. The total supply of $VIRTUAL is capped at 1 billion tokens, all of which have been fully unlocked. The distribution includes 60% in public circulation, 5% allocated to the liquidity pool, and 35% stored in the ecosystem treasury. This treasury is managed by the DAO, with a maximum annual issuance cap of 10% over the next three years. As the utility and governance token of the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem, it has multiple functions, including encouraging contributions, supporting development decisions, and managing protocol funds. By staking VIRTUAL tokens, token holders can influence the AI agent projects eligible for development support, ensuring that resource allocation aligns with community interests.
Whenever a new AI agent is generated, a corresponding token (agent token) will be issued and paired with the VIRTUAL token, creating a market for agent ownership. As co-owners, agent token holders can participate in the governance and revenue distribution of the agent. This mechanism effectively solves the income distribution problem for AI developers and data contributors, while also reducing the complexity for application developers to implement AI agents.
VI. VIRTUAL Future Value Analysis
Virtuals Protocol has achieved the decentralized co-ownership of AI agents, transforming these agents into community-owned revenue-generating assets. Users can easily deploy AI agents using the protocol's development stack (including SDK and Interference API) and profit in the virtual economy. This market-driven and co-owned model is consistent with Virtuals Protocol's mission to promote innovation and inclusiveness in the artificial intelligence and gaming industries. As the ecosystem develops and more users participate, Virtuals Protocol has the potential to become a leader in the convergence of artificial intelligence and the metaverse. Its future value is reflected in the following aspects:
- Market Demand: With the rapid development of generative AI and the metaverse, the demand for efficient, secure, and user-friendly AI agent solutions will continue to grow.
- Ecosystem Expansion: The protocol attracts more users to participate through the IAO (Initial Agent Offering) and the co-ownership mechanism of agent tokens, injecting sustained vitality into the ecosystem.
- Decentralized Innovation: Through community governance and decentralized incentive mechanisms, the protocol ensures long-term sustainable development.
- Buyback Program: The token value is supported in the long term through DApp revenue-backed token buybacks and burnings.
To purchase VIRTUAL, you can operate through a centralized cryptocurrency exchange. First, create an account on The First trading platform and complete the verification and fund deposit. After these steps, you can start buying VIRTUAL. The First will list the VIRTUAL spot trading pair on 2024-12-19 16:00 (UTC+-8), and users can trade and purchase it according to their investment needs.
