Author: 0xJeff, Crypto KOL
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
The dominant narrative for 2025 is the narrative of collective/collective intelligence. As individual agents rapidly develop and ecosystems like Virtuals, Story, and ai16z take the lead, this transformation seems inevitable.
TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) is another key pillar for fully autonomous AI agents. Projects like Phala Network and its founder Marvin Tong are leading this trend and have conducted experiments like the "Unruggable ICO" in collaboration with Skely (founder of aiPool). Investors use TEE to send funds to the agent, which securely calculates the number of ICO tokens to be distributed based on the received funds.
Related reading: Phala Network and ai16z play AI experiments: AI self-replication and pre-sale, aiPool and Spore.fun drive new gameplay
Although positive feedback has been received, concerns still exist. As the Freysa (a sci-fi AI character) ACT game shows, agents can still be tricked into releasing funds. This indicates that the verification mechanism needs to be continuously strengthened.
Nevertheless, the early experiments are still promising. For example, the first token launched by aiPool (a TEE agent) saw its market value soar to $70-80 million after its release.
Another notable experiment is SPORE, in which agents "give birth" to new agents. Just like human evolution, weaker genes die off, while stronger genes produce better offspring. Their first-generation agents Adam and Eve have already reached a market value of over $1 million, and the next generation was born 14 hours later.
Changing Trends of AI Agents
The market focus has shifted from individual agents, unless they have a distinct personality or alpha-generating capability. The focus is now on autonomous agent experiments, and this trend may accelerate as decentralized artificial intelligence infrastructure (DeAI) is expected to launch in the first/second quarter of 2025.
Look forward to more creative experiments and opportunities to invest in these experiments.
Although the current experiments have received enthusiastic responses, two narratives with significant TAM (Total Addressable Market) have not yet been fully explored:
NSFW Agents / AI Companions
Due to the increasing sense of loneliness and the demand for AI companions capable of meaningful interaction, the TAM for NSFW Agents / AI Companions exceeds $100 billion.
(PANews note: NSFW stands for Not Safe For Work, i.e., content that is not suitable for viewing at work.)
The leading projects in this category include:
- AI Waifu: Anime waifu agents leveraging the Virtuals Protocol infrastructure
- Nectar AI: Realistic NSFW AI Dream GF, providing SaaS models
- Lush: NSFW AI influencer, with a flagship agent named Jenny
The reasons for Lush's success:
- The $LUSH token has already been launched
- Launched the Lush Exchange, a platform for launching NSFW agents
- Revenue model may include subscription fees, gifts, etc.
Web3 provides the ability to invest in "shares" of agents, allowing investors to invest in these attractive AI influencers and generate future revenue.
$LUSH may be used as a key utility token within the ecosystem, for accessing advanced features and key payment methods.
Lush also plans to create a creator marketplace, allowing artists to monetize their work by generating content through their own models. This adds another revenue stream to the ecosystem.
Robots
The intersection of robots and Web3 is gaining increasing attention, especially after OpenAI announced its foray into humanoid robots. Their goal is to leverage LLMs to help robots interpret text and sensory data, enhancing their real-world interaction capabilities.
The leading projects in the Web3 robotics space are FrodoBots and Small Autonomous Motherfucker.
Key Highlights of Frodobots:
- Frodobots operate in over 40 cities, collecting real-world data.
- Collaborating with top researchers from leading universities to refine Visual Language Models (VLMs) and progress towards AGI.
- Interesting interactions with robots have appeared in popular TikTok videos, attracting significant attention.
- Frodobots is actually a deep research team dedicated to robotics technology. SAM was established to let people understand their work, which is "crowdsourcing real-world datasets through robot gaming".
- DePIN + Embedded AI + Robot Gaming + Committed to the Future of AGI
The team is empowering SAM with the ability to autonomously control robots in over 40 cities and navigate through the cities, creating more viral content, which may help increase attention and token prices.
Final Thoughts
The market has been searching for unique, niche AI agent domains. AI companions and robots have massive potential markets and are expected to gain significant traction in early 2025.
As DeAI infrastructure is launched and autonomous agent experiments increase, these narratives are expected to move from the periphery to the spotlight of the market.
These domains are worth close attention for investors and builders, not only for their speculative potential but also because they can redefine the scope of AI applications in the next stage of this rapidly evolving ecosystem.
Related reading: Behind Phala Network's Explosion: Sufficient TEE Technology Reserve, Adopted by ai16z, and the Right Time for the AI Agent Trend
