Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
In the past month, the AI Agent has sparked a new craze in the crypto industry.
In less than a month, the total market capitalization of the entire AI Agent track projects once reached over $10 billion. Among them, Virtuals once reached a market capitalization of $3 billion, and projects like ai16z and Fartcoin once reached $1 billion. Foresight News has incomplete statistics, and there are at least 14 cryptocurrencies related to AI Agent with a market capitalization of over $100 million.
Many Web3 practitioners believe that AI Agent may be one of the biggest narratives in this cycle, just like DeFi, Non-Fungible Token and metaverse in the previous two cycles. So, when a brand-new crypto narrative is born in the early stage, how can we find the leading crypto projects of AI Agent through a set of good methodologies? The author tries to list ten methods for the readers.
1. On-chain Revenue Method
This method is more suitable for judging platform-type AI Agents, such as Clanker, vvaifu.fun, and Virtuals. If the daily on-chain revenue and on-chain transaction volume have abnormal changes, such as consecutive high-speed growth, it may indicate that this AI Agent is likely to have good development. On the contrary, it may mean that the development has stagnated.
Image source: Dune
For example, Clanker, as a star project of the AI Agent in the Base ecosystem, can see from the on-chain data that after November 26, the number of issued tokens, traders, and on-chain revenue have all started to decline, and this trend is also immediately reflected in the token price.
2. Developer Attention Method
If a project has more stars on Github, it may mean that more developers are paying attention to and recognizing this framework. This method is more suitable for judging framework-type AI Agents, such as Eliza.
Search on Github to see how many stars the framework-type AI Agent has. For example, ai16z/Eliza has gained over 5,300 stars in less than a month, which is a very surprising data.
Data source: GitHub
As shown in the figure above, the developer attention to ai16z/Eliza has exceeded Uniswap in just one month. Another set of data for comparison: Sui currently has 6,400 stars, Solana has 13,000 stars, Ethereum has 50,000 stars, and Base has 70,000 stars.
However, it should be noted that the stars on Github can also be artificially inflated, although this behavior is not yet widespread. Therefore, this indicator can be used as an auxiliary reference for decision-making.
3. KOL Follower Quantity Method
One of the relatively certain tracks of AI Agent is KOL (Key Opinion Leader).
Currently, the more famous AI Agent-style KOLs include: Terminal of Truths (210,000 followers), aixbt (160,000 followers), Zerebro (60,000 followers), Eliza (14,000 followers), LUNA (30,000 followers on Twitter, 500,000 followers on TikTok), etc.
One of the major differences in this round of AI revolution is the change in semantics. The author predicts that a KOL leader in AI Agent may emerge, and the market capitalization of its token may even exceed $5 billion. The change in the number of followers may become one of the important indicators.
4. Influential Leader Method
There are constantly leaders in the AI industry entering the Crypto sector. Currently, there are representatives such as Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z (supporting projects like ai16z), and Sam Altman (supporting projects like Worldcoin). They have brought multiple cryptocurrencies worth over $1 billion to the crypto circle. It can be foreseen that there will be more in the future, such as Musk and his Grok.
There are also those with lower certainty, such as Apple, Meta, TikTok, and AI vendors like Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, which may bring something different to Crypto.
It is particularly necessary to pay attention to those tech giants who are simultaneously researching AI and Crypto, such as Musk, Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, and Huang Renxun. Their leadership in the tech industry often translates to the crypto industry as well.
5. External World Breakthrough Method
If AI Agent is really the biggest narrative in this cycle, it needs to pay extra attention to the influence of AI Agent on the outside world. For example, Web2 developers are attracted by the AI Agent frameworks and products of Web3. According to the author's knowledge, Eliza is currently receiving attention from some AI practitioners outside the circle.
KOL-related products, such as Terminal of Truths and LUNA, have also gained the attention of people outside the circle, and they already have over 200,000 followers, and their influence is still expanding. It is necessary to understand and judge whether this trend will further break through the circle and affect the wider external world.
6. "Listing Effect" of Top Exchanges Method
Early participants in Sandbox may know that some metaverse concepts soared after being listed on Binance. Top exchanges are called top exchanges because they need to ensure that the coins they list can lead the market. If they are led by other exchanges, they will gradually lose their position as a top exchange.
Pay more attention to the listing information and Launchpad information of Binance, Upbit, Coinbase, Bitget, and Hype, as they are in fierce competition for the "listing effect" this cycle.
Especially Coinbase and Hype, Americans are indeed leading in the pan-AI Agent field, and they may have faster information advantages.
7. Public Chain Method
Some public chains are naturally suitable for the birth of AI Agent projects, naturally lowering the threshold for the birth of AI Agent. Finding a few good public chains and finding good AI Agent projects on these public chains can be twice the result with half the effort.
For example, Base has 70,000 developer stars, surpassing Ethereum and far exceeding Solana and Sui, which can be said to be the outstanding late-comer.
Coinbase itself also attaches great importance to AI Agent and has been laying out early. This will give it a great first-mover advantage in the future competition.
The advantage of Solana is that it does well in meme platforms, and AI Agent is also highly dependent on meme to rise, which is a very big advantage for Solana.
8. AI Agent Community Method
Everyone has their own blind spots, but the power of a team is all-encompassing and without dead ends.
Establishing your own AI Agent exchange group and community, or finding one or two such high-quality communities, is very important. Opportunities in AI Agent are often born in corners that no one notices, and this is when the power of the community is needed.
9. Track Segmentation Method
There are also various tracks within AI Agent, such as the KOL track, the beautiful anchor track, the investment research blogger track, the meme platform track, the VC track, the platform track, and the framework track...
There are many tracks within AI Agent, and not all tracks can be unrefuted. It is necessary to find the tracks that have a real chance of surviving to the end.
10. Source Method
The beginning of the beginning, who started it? Which AI Agent opened up the narrative of the entire track, it may be the leader of this track.
In the Non-Fungible Token track, CryptoPunks has always been in a transcendent position, Ape has created a new narrative for the entire track, and Bored Ape is one of the best NFTs combined with Web2; in the metaverse track, Sandbox and Decentraland were listed on top exchanges early on and occupied the leading position of the metaverse; Uniswap first implemented the concept of automated market makers in decentralized exchanges (DEX), becoming a pioneer of the market...
Those projects that achieve systemic innovation are often the ones that get the biggest share of the track dividends.
It will be like BTC, making you always feel that it is expensive, but when you look back, it was really cheap at that time.
