Source: Bai Hua Blockchain
Which track has the most potential in this bull market?
If asked at the beginning of this bull market, the answer would undoubtedly be the Bitcoin ecosystem and the AI track. However, as the industry has developed to its current stage, Bitcoin has already broken through the $100,000 mark, and the Bitcoin ecosystem's runes and symbols have basically gone out, while the AI track has continued to be hot, even taking over the MEME track, showing signs of being on par with the DeFi Summer.
Of course, the current AI track and the AI track led by WLD, TAO, etc. at the beginning of last year are not the same type of projects. The currently popular and trending ones are the AI agent track derived from AI MEME.
So, what is an AI agent? What is the current development status in the industry, and what opportunities are there for ordinary people?
01 AI Agent: The Track's Market Cap Approaches $20 Billion in Two Months
An AI agent is an intelligent system that can perceive the environment and take corresponding actions, meaning that an AI agent not only provides search results but can also plan, decompose, and execute tasks on its own. It can be understood as your robot assistant, which can help you handle a series of trivial matters based on your needs.
The founder of OpenAI recently stated that "Agent will be the next major breakthrough," and the company will launch its own AI agent product in January this year. The AI agent war in Web2 is already in full swing, and the AI agent track in Web3 has also erupted rapidly in just a few months.
Just at the beginning of October, everyone was still immersed in the rapid rise of the AI MEME leader Goat, and AI agent was rarely mentioned. In less than two months, the total market cap of the AI agent track has reached $17.65 billion, with a market cap increase of more than 60% in the last seven days. In the midst of an unstable overall crypto market, the AI agent track is another hot spot, and the speed of the AI agent explosion is undeniably fast.
Data source: cookie.fun, January 2, 2025
From the 827 AI agent projects currently recorded by cookie.fun, the Virtuals ecosystem projects account for more than 38% of the market cap, and the second-ranked Ai16z ecosystem accounts for 16.37%. These two ecosystems have each formed a force in the entire AI agent track, with a strong rivalry.
Among the current AI agents projects, there are pure MEME-attribute AI agents represented by GOAT and Fartcoin, as well as application-type projects represented by Virtuals, Ai16z, and ZEREBRO that support the development and deployment of AI agents. However, judging from the current discussion heat on social media platforms and the growth in market cap, AI agents with certain functionality and infrastructure are clearly more popular than pure AI MEME.
02 Highlights of AI Agents
1) Virtuals Ecosystem
As the AI agent track has developed to the present, the Virtuals ecosystem has firmly established itself as the industry leader. Currently, the Virtuals ecosystem accounts for more than 38% of the AI agent track's market cap, and the market cap of the Virtuals Protocol has also reached $4.88 billion, ranking 36th among all crypto assets.
Virtuals Protocol is an AI agent issuance platform that helps users easily build and issue AI agents. Currently, there are more than 500 AI agents that can be counted on the Virtuals ecosystem website. For the AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem, whether it's creating new AI agents or selling tokens and obtaining service revenue, they are deeply bound to Virtuals. Therefore, as the AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem continue to develop, the value of the entire ecosystem will be fed back to Virtuals, similar to how ETH and SOL capture the value of their entire public chain ecosystems. The economic model of the Virtuals Protocol is indeed ahead of all other competing platforms.
Currently, the market cap and number of AI agents in the entire ecosystem are growing rapidly. Here are a few of the top AI agents:
Aixbt
Aixbt is currently the number one AI agent in terms of heat on X, and according to cookie.fun's statistics, Aixbt's topic share on X has already exceeded 17% of all AI agents. As an AI agent that aggregates all the hot crypto information, Aixbt can be said to have become a "quite influential" KOL on X. Aixbt's total market cap is currently $598 million, second only to Virtuals in the entire ecosystem.
G.A.M.E
G.A.M.E is the AI agent framework in the Virtuals ecosystem, developed by the Virtuals official team. All AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem are based on the G.A.M.E modular framework, which can be understood as the "brain" of all AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem.
When the AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem are running, they need to repeatedly call G.A.M.E. Currently, the calling is still free, but once the charging starts, the revenue in the G.A.M.E treasury will be quite considerable.
G.A.M.E's current total market cap is $354 million, second only to Aixbt in the Virtuals ecosystem.
Luna
Luna is currently the second most well-known AI agent in the Virtuals ecosystem after Aixbt, but it became famous much earlier than Aixbt.
Luna is an AI idol launched by the Virtuals ecosystem, which establishes connections with fans through live broadcasts or text output on various social platforms, and can also incentivize users to participate in activities through on-chain transfers. Luna's total market cap is currently $156 million.
VaderAI
VaderAI claims to be the first AI agent token with autonomous trading, where users can obtain whitelist access rights or participate in investments by pledging and locking up. VaderAI has risen rapidly since its launch, and its current market cap has reached $120 million.
2) Ai16z Ecosystem
Currently in the AI agent track, aside from the Virtuals ecosystem, Ai16z is undoubtedly the biggest IP. However, unlike the Virtuals ecosystem, which had a very complete AI agent issuance mechanism and economic incentive mechanism from the beginning, Ai16z started from AI MEME and then considered building the token incentive mechanism into Ai16z's architecture, so it started much later.
But recently, the momentum of the Ai16z ecosystem has also been very strong, with the entire ecosystem's market cap already accounting for more than 40% of Virtuals' market cap, and the market cap of the leading Ai16z has also exceeded $2 billion.
So how did Ai16z transform from an AI MEME into an ecosystem platform?
This brings us to Eliza. Eliza is the AI agent framework developed by the Ai16z team, supporting the development and deployment of AI agents, such as the autonomous investment DAO like Ai16z. It is similar to the G.A.M.E framework mentioned in the Virtuals ecosystem.
Currently, Ai16z's value capture is not only the narrative of the Ai16z autonomous investment DAO, but also the ecosystem platform based on the Eliza framework, where all AI agent tokens using the Eliza framework will allocate 5-10% to the Ai16z DAO.
As an open-source framework, Eliza is currently ranked first on the GitHub trending list in December, and more and more developers are accelerating its adoption, which is also one of the reasons for the increasing heat of the Ai16z ecosystem.
However, the Ai16z ecosystem has just emerged, and the project market caps are generally still not high. Moreover, the AI agent Eliza, which shares the same name as the open-source framework, is also quite popular. Although Ai16z founder Shaw has stated that the team only supports the AI agent Eliza and that it is a different project team, recently Shaw and other important figures in the Ai16z team have announced that they are serving as advisors to Eliza, which has also caused Eliza's market cap to take off along with the explosion of the Ai16z ecosystem.
3) Other Application-Type AI Agents
Rig (ARC)
Rig is also an AI agent framework, developed based on the Rust language. The team behind it has quite strong technical capabilities. Compared to other AI agent frameworks, Rig's use of the Rust language has features like high performance and memory safety, so it has been widely sought after by developers since its launch, and its GitHub heat is second only to Eliza.
However, the development threshold for Rust is a bit high, which may also bring certain limitations. Currently, ARC's market cap is $394 million, and its heat on X is also very high.
ZerePy (ZEREBRO)
ZerePy is also an AI agent framework, launched by the Zerebro team, based on the Python language, which is quite friendly to both beginners and professional developers.
Zerebro itself is a fairly top-level AI agent, not only able to create music, Non-Fungible Tokens, and issue Tokens, but also has a record company, through the launch of ZerePy, Zerebro has transformed into an AI agent platform, further opening up Zerebro's imagination space. Currently, its market value has reached $725 million, ranking fifth on the X heat ranking list of cookie.fun.
Griffain
Griffain is an AI agent platform based on Solana, and the AI agents it launches are not only limited to interactions on various social platforms, but also support the automation of various DeFi transactions, and the endorsement and support from Solana Labs and the founders of Solana have also kept Griffain's heat high since its launch. Currently, Griffain's market value is $445 million, and its heat on social media platforms is also quite good.
Vvaifu
Like Virtuals, Vvaifu is also an AI agent launch platform, where users do not need complex programming skills to issue AI agents, making it more user-friendly for beginners.
Vvaifu also has a good economic model, with the protocol adopting a deflationary mechanism: when AI agents are created on the Vvaifu platform, a certain amount of Vvaifu will be burned, ensuring that the total amount of Vvaifu will decrease year by year as the ecosystem develops, increasing its scarcity. Currently, the total market value of Vvaifu is $136 million, but as the AI agent launch platform with the first-mover advantage in the Solana ecosystem, its performance is not too impressive so far.
4) Pure AI meme
In the previous meme craze, AI Memes led by GOAT and ACT first exploded, igniting the AI track, especially with the listing of ACT on top platforms, its market value soaring from more than $20 million to over $600 million, bringing more investment effects to the AI Meme.
However, in just two months, the current market trend has shifted from pure AI meme to application-oriented AI agents, although during this period, AI Memes such as Fartcoin and Turbo have seen their market values surge rapidly, even exceeding $1 billion, but overall, the heat of pure AI Meme has greatly diminished.
03 Summary
Although the AI agent track is hot, the trend has shifted from AI meme to application-oriented AI agent in less than two months, and the AI agent track has just started. The projects mentioned above are just some of the projects that have occupied the first-mover advantage and have a larger market value, but the current situation of the entire track is that new concepts and new projects are emerging endlessly, and the overall pattern of the track is far from being finalized.
From the current hot situation of the AI agent track and the fact that Web2 AI giants are scrambling to occupy the AI agent trend, the fire in the AI agent track should continue for a long time in the future.
