Author: Xiyou, ChainCatcher
Editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
As of December 31, a16z's market capitalization has approached the $2 billion mark, with a gain of over 40% in the past 24 hours. It is worth noting that since the launch of the a16z token on October 26, it has quickly grown into a project with a market capitalization of nearly $2 billion in less than two months, and its market heat is still undiminished, continuing to rise.
As the "first AI-driven decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for investment", a16z is a blockbuster project in the wave of AI Agent, and its Eliza AI Agent construction framework has successfully supported the issuance of hundreds of AI Agent projects, including the popular AI Agent token project aiPool, as well as collaborations with Treasure DAO and Loot Realms to develop small games such as Smolworl and Eternum.
According to GitHub data on December 31, the Eliza autonomous agent framework developed by the a16z team ranked first on the GitHub trend list in December.
Driven by the "investment + Eliza development framework technology", a16z has become the incubation and production center for AI Agent projects. So, what AI Agent projects has a16z participated in and supported?
a16z's new goal: launch an AI Agent Initial Offering (IAO) platform, positioning itself as the "L1 blockchain for AI"
On December 28, the a16z project disclosed an important piece of information on the governance forum HackMD: its 2025 proposal planning will focus on expanding the application scenarios of the a16z token to stimulate the prosperity and growth of the ecosystem, and promote the synergistic value-added effect among projects within the ecosystem. Two highlights of the proposal are particularly noteworthy: one is the plan to launch an IAO platform based on AI Agent issuance; the other is to position a16z as the L1 blockchain for artificial intelligence (AI).
Specifically, a16z plans to launch the official a16z Launchpad platform in the first quarter of 2025, based on the Eliza AI Agent proxy framework, which will borrow the model of Pump.fun and be dedicated to launching AI Agent proxy projects. It is reported that the platform will be realized through the acquisition of existing technical teams.
When new AI projects release their tokens on this Launchpad platform, the platform will charge the project party a launch fee and token transaction fee. These fees will be divided into two parts for use: one part will be used to repurchase a16z tokens from the market, and the other part will be injected into the a16z token liquidity pool for pairing. At the same time, AI Agent developers need to purchase a16z tokens to create a liquidity pool when launching new AI projects on the platform. Through the repurchase mechanism and liquidity pool creation, a rich application scenario and appreciation potential are provided for the a16z token.
In addition, a16z is also considering positioning itself as the L1 blockchain for AI, aiming to build a decentralized general artificial intelligence (AGI) infrastructure. Once realized, the a16z token will become the core asset of the public chain and the basic transaction medium currency between AI Agent applications.
In summary, the key proposal put forward by the a16z governance forum in 2025 focuses on optimizing the economic model of the a16z token, aiming to comprehensively capture and enhance the value of the entire ecosystem. The proposal is committed to building a self-sustaining and robust economic system, and cleverly connects the interests of individual projects with the overall prosperity of the a16z ecosystem by simplifying the project launch process, accelerating project growth, and ensuring market liquidity.
Since the announcement of this news on December 28, the market capitalization of the a16z token has surged from $1 billion to over $1.9 billion, an increase of 100%. This significant market response foreshadows investors' expectations for the future of the a16z proposal.
What AI Agent projects has a16z participated in?
1. AI Agent development framework Eliza: building the Eliza OS AI Agent development system
Eliza is the AI Agent development framework infrastructure built by a16z, which supports developers to quickly customize their own AI Agents. At the same time, a16z aims to build the Eliza OS AI Agent development system based on Eliza.
According to data from elizas.world, more than a hundred AI Agent projects have been built based on the Eliza framework, and new projects are joining every day.
On November 19, a third party created a lowercase token called "eliza" on the AI Agent token issuance platform Vvaifudotfun. Subsequently, the founder of a16z announced the launch of the uppercase Eliza framework token ELIZA in collaboration with the third party, sparking a dispute over the uppercase and lowercase versions of the "eliza" token.
As of December 31, the uppercase ELIZA token is priced at $0.15, with a market capitalization of $150 million and a 24-hour gain of over 70%; the lowercase eliza token is priced at $0.009, with a market capitalization of $9 million and a 24-hour gain of about 45%.
2. AI Agent venture capital robot @pmairca
@pmairca is an AI Agent-led venture capital robot launched by a16z, modeled after a16z partner Marc Andreessen, using AI models to simulate his investment decision-making process, and is seen as the AI virtual embodiment of Marc in the crypto community.
As of December 31, the virtual AI investment fund @pmairca managed by Marc Andreessen has a fund size of $30 million.
3. AI agent chatbot Degen Spartan AI (degenai)
Degen Spartan AI (degenai) is an autonomous trading AI agent chatbot developed by a16z, playing the role of an AI trader within a16z. Users usually chat with Degen Spartan AI before communicating with a16z on investment decisions, indirectly influencing a16z's final decisions through it.
On December 31, the degenai token is currently priced at around $0.08, with a market capitalization of around $90 million and a 24-hour gain of about 40%, and a portion of a16z's investment returns will also be used to repurchase degenai tokens.
4. AI Agent self-issuing project aiPool based on Eliza
aiPool is an AI Agent self-issuing project built by the user @Skely based on the Eliza framework. In this project, users inject funds into the AI Agent's address, and the AI Agent will autonomously decide and issue tokens, including the naming of the tokens.
Since @Skely is an active member of the a16z DAO, the project has received multiple public retweets and support from a16z founder Shaw, which has garnered extremely high attention and heat for the aiPool project.
On December 24, aiPool officially announced the issuance of its first token, and within just 60 minutes of the pre-sale opening, it successfully raised 25,000 SOL, worth about $4.72 million. Immediately afterwards, the first Meme coin project METAVERSE (METAV) launched by aiPool also announced its official launch. The market capitalization of METAV quickly soared to $90 million, once again writing a legend of wealth creation in the crypto community. Although on December 31, the price of METAV has retreated to $0.048, with a market capitalization of $48 million, its previous outstanding performance is still noteworthy. However, the Twitter account of the project initiator @Skely has been frozen.
Subsequently, aiPool also issued tokens such as $COSMIC_GIGGLE, $NORMIEPILL, $HYPERBOLE, $HYPERREALITY, and $HYPERREAL, but their heat did not exceed that of METAV.
5. Zerebro: Collaborating with a16z to develop the AI Agent open-source Zerepy framework
Zerebro (ZEREBRO) was originally an AI Meme project on the Solana chain, representing a fine-tunable AI content generation system, aiming to cross multiple social platforms such as Twitter, Warpcast, and Telegram to achieve autonomous content creation and distribution.
On November 29, Zerebro announced the launch of the Python-based AI Agent development framework Zerepy, which supports users to build customized AI Agents and deploy their own proxies on X, with support from OpenAI or Anthropic LLM. Based on ZerePy, the AI Agent not only can autonomously post, reply, like, retweet, and read timelines, but also can extend the framework to other social media platforms.
On December 20, Tint, the co-founder of Zerebro, announced that Zerebro will work with a16z to promote the development of the open-source framework. The a16z team will be the first external contributor to help improve the ZerePy framework, while the Zerebro team will also contribute to the Eliza framework, achieving mutual benefit.
Under the strong influence of a16z, the Zerebro project has quickly attracted widespread market attention. As of December 31, the ZEREBRO quote has reached $0.6, with a market capitalization of $60 million, and the coin price has increased by 100% in the past three days.
6. Shaw has publicly supported the AI Agent issuance platform vvaifu.fun (Dasha)
vvaifu.fun is a platform focused on the Solana chain for creating and issuing AI Agent projects, similar to the role of Pump.fun in the meme coin issuance field. The platform empowers every user to easily create their own AI Agent and its accompanying tokens, and seamlessly integrate these AI Agent assistants into popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Telegram, and Discord, realizing automated user interaction. According to the community, vvaifu.fun claimed to have the participation of a16z in the early stage, and the founders of a16z have publicly supported and optimistic about the project on the social media platform X. The community users believe that if a16z acquires an AI Agent issuance platform, vvaifu.fun is considered the platform that a16z may acquire in the future, and ELIZA and Eliza tokens are both issued based on this platform.
The AI Agent bot created by the vvaifu.fun official is Dasha, which not only has its own Twitter account, Telegram channel, and Discord community, but its management and operation are also fully autonomous by AI.
According to the VVAIFU token quote of $0.11 on December 31, the market capitalization is about $110 million, with a 100% increase in the past 24 hours.
7. Eliza collaborates with Treasure DAO, Loot Realms, and others to develop AI Agent-based mini-games Smolworld and Eternum
In the latest interview, Shaw revealed that several mini-games built using Eliza technology are about to be launched.
Among them, Eliza collaborated with Treasure DAO to create a mini-game called Smolworld. The highlight of this game is the AI Agent-driven pet monkey characters, and players only need to enter simple instructions for these smart and agile little monkeys to autonomously execute on-chain tasks, bringing players an unprecedented gaming experience.
In addition, another strategy game called Eternum, launched by Loot Realms, is also integrating Eliza technology, and this integration will give the AI Agent agents in the Eternum game their own wallet function, and players in the game can "challenge" and "defeat" these agents to obtain the rewards in their wallets.
