Author: Nancy, PANews
As the infrastructure continues to improve and application scenarios are gradually implemented, the encrypted AI Agent ecosystem is becoming increasingly prosperous, presenting a new market development trajectory, with liquidity and user participation also constantly increasing. In this wave of AI Agent fever, ai16z and Virtuals Protocol are undoubtedly the two most powerful representative projects, and their ecosystems have attracted the active participation of various capital seeking to strike it rich.
ai16z and Virtuals lead the AI Agent market, contributing more than half of the market share
Although the AI Agent ecosystem has risen rapidly in the encrypted market, attracting a lot of attention and capital, its market structure is still relatively simple, mainly relying on the drive of a few leading projects.
According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the overall market capitalization of the AI Agent has reached $11.68 billion, with a growth of nearly 39.1% in the past 7 days. This growth trend indicates the rapid growth of the AI Agent ecosystem in the encrypted market.
In terms of ecosystem scale, there is a clear head effect in the entire encrypted AI Agent, mainly dominated by the two projects Virtuals and ai16z. Specifically, Virtuals' ecosystem market value reached $5.01 billion, and ai16z reached $1.63 billion, accounting for 56.8% of the AI Agent market share, while the total market value of other projects is about $170 million. This also means that the current growth and development of AI Agent is more dependent on the construction of these two leading projects.
At the same time, in terms of type, Virtuals' market value exceeds that of customized AI Agents, which is $4.67 billion, and the cumulative market value of other categories reaches $1.8 billion.
From the on-chain distribution, Base and Solana are the two main battlegrounds for AI Agents. Among them, the market value of AI Agents on Base is about $5.76 billion, and the market value on Solana is $5.47 billion, together contributing 96.1% of the overall market, while the cumulative market value of other chain projects is only $920 million, further indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem is still in its infancy.
Although Base and Solana are on par in terms of market size for AI Agents, there are significant differences in their ecosystem compositions. The main project in the Base ecosystem is Virtuals, with 86.9% of the projects coming from this ecosystem. In contrast, ai16z only accounts for nearly one-third of the market share on Solana, indicating that the AI Agent ecosystem on Solana is more diverse and rich compared to Base.
Presenting different ecosystem development paths, but with significant market concentration
With the rise of Virtuals and ai16z, their ecosystem projects have also become the focus of market investors' attention and bets.
According to daos.fun data, as of December 30, ai16z's net asset value (NAV) is about $23.355 million, covering more than 1,400 tokens. Among these tokens, only 3 have a market value of over $1 million, which are ELIZA, fxn, and degenai, and their cumulative market value accounts for 84.3% of the overall; there are 6 tokens with asset sizes between $100,000 and $1 million, and the market values of the remaining tokens are all less than $100,000. This distribution indicates that the composition of ai16z's tokens is relatively concentrated, with a few high-value tokens dominating the overall asset size, while the market values of most tokens are relatively scattered, showing that the ecosystem is still in a highly differentiated state.
Compared to ai16z, the quality of Virtuals' ecosystem projects is relatively higher, and it has recently been widely discussed due to its market value exceeding the star AI project Bittensor (TAO). However, there is also a certain imbalance in the structure of the Virtuals ecosystem.
The Virtuals website shows that as of December 30, there are currently about 510 projects in the Virtuals ecosystem. Among them, there are 4 projects with a market value of over $100 million, namely AIXBT, G.A.M.E, Luna, and VaderAI, accounting for 19.2% of the entire ecosystem; there are 99 projects with a market value between $1 million and $100 million, and about 60% of the remaining projects have a market value of less than $100,000. Although Virtuals' ecosystem projects have gained more market recognition, there is still a certain degree of concentration in its ecosystem development.
Regarding the different AI Agent development paths of ai16z and Virtuals, Web3 independent researcher Haotian previously pointed out that ai16z is more open-source, more like an "Android-style" developer ecosystem alliance route, but due to the lack of a reasonable evaluation model for ai16z's token economics, its token bundle lacks cohesion in the short term. However, this will be resolved after a systematic Tokenomics. At the same time, each member of the ai16z token bundle is showing their own strengths, and the driving force is in the developer community. The first thing Shaw needs to do is to lead the scattered token bundle into a super open-source growth flywheel driven by the technical open-source community.
In a recent interview with PANews, Shaw revealed that ai16z will announce a new token economic proposal around January 1, 2025, including LP pairing mechanisms, DeFi function integration, and other content.
Comparison between Virtuals and ai16z, source: @0xgangWhat
In comparison, Virtuals is more closed. Haotian pointed out that Virtuals has taken an "Apple-style" ecosystem expansion path, more like an AI Agent "star-making factory". Since Virtuals had a complete token economics from the early stage, users need to pledge the token VIRTUAL to create AI Agents, and users need to consume VIRTUAL tokens to purchase new AI Agent tokens, so the more AI Agents issued on Virtuals, the greater the demand for the Virtuals token, naturally forming a positive growth flywheel. However, since Virtuals focuses on the asset issuance platform and provides a standard AI Agent framework base, it will lead to a certain homogenization of the AI Agents on the platform. Virtuals' asset issuance-centric and light-technology ecosystem breakthrough is essentially the inherent limitation of a closed ecosystem.
From pure MEME to on-chain applications, AI Agents are revolutionizing the market operation model
The hype around Virtuals and ai16z reflects the increased attention on AI Agents, and is also an important manifestation of the evolution of MEME development.
"AI is the biggest theme for human technology and productivity improvement in the next 20 years, and it can be integrated into all Crypto categories, including DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and Desci. During the rapid growth period, it will bring a large number of new applications and new technologies, all of which can be applied to Crypto," crypto KOL 0xWizard believes that the new targets combined with AI may recreate a chain-based asset market value, or even recreate the overall crypto market value.
"From the initial pure MEME like GOAT, to the chatting AI Agents, to ai16z-like on-chain funds, and then to platforms like Virtuals and Spore that issue new types of assets, each step is getting closer to applications. The essence of this round of on-chain market is the new 'application projects' bypassing exchanges and VCs, directly realizing the redistribution of interests through the mode of issuing new assets on-chain. At the same time, project parties no longer need to flatter VCs, compete for resources, and find exchanges to pay the fees, they can directly pull out and 'walk' on the chain to see if the market is willing to buy," crypto KOL @Michael_Liu93 pointed out.
Haotian also believes that the environment has changed, and the logic of capturing market value is also changing, mainly reflected in the following points: (1) From the past accumulation of infrastructure that is divorced from the actual market demand to the use of AI Agent applications to verify market demand; (2) The profit space of the secondary market has become increasingly narrow due to the previous VC financing rounds, now the project can be constructed in the form of open-source Public Good and directly face the secondary market financing, and the self-management of assets by AI Agent can bring greater imagination space for the project; (3) The airdrop method used in the past to acquire early users and traffic has brought subsequent operational pressure, the MEME-style secondary market opening can suit the Tokenomics (LP fees, transaction taxes, reserved share release, etc.) of continuous growth; (4) After breaking the final listing on CEX, it will gradually tend to be dominated by DEX, and high-quality project parties have a greater probability of "grassroots counterattack"; (5) Realize a brand-new market operation rule, the market and ecological foundation of the projects that do not integrate with the community and do not always focus on the product line is very difficult to emerge.
