From the comments at the end of the recent article, it seems that many readers still lack a fundamental understanding of the underlying logic behind the "AI agent + Crypto" development path, and are feeling confused and at a loss about the proliferation of projects and emerging hot spots.
This ecosystem has gone from being little-known a few months ago to thriving today, and the development time has not been long. I don't dare to say that my understanding is very deep, but I would like to share some logic and thoughts based on my observations and reflections during this period.
In my view, the fundamental reason why this round of "AI agent + Crypto" has been able to develop to the current scale is that the development of AI agents has allowed us to see the possibility of this track bringing real applications and service value.
The early success of GOAT, in my view, achieved a very critical first step, which is to successfully prove that:
AI agents have the possibility of combining with crypto assets.
This is an unprecedented breakthrough.
However, this breakthrough, in my view at the time, only limited the development of this track to the meme coin stage.
But later, when I saw the interview with the founder of Virtuals, my understanding of this track began to change. At that time, I began to vaguely feel that this track might break through the meme coin and rise to real value applications and business scenarios.
Why?
Because from the founder's thoughts and his practical path, his vision is definitely not to create a bunch of meme coins with only emotional value, but to expect to generate real services and value.
In that interview, the founder mentioned the first AI agent they created, LUNA. At that time, I was not too fond of this anime-style AI agent, perhaps because I don't use TikTok, or perhaps because I haven't seen much of LUNA's Twitter, but the manga-style appearance of LUNA still made me think it was probably just a meme coin.
What really made me feel that AI agents are starting to provide real value is AIXBT. Because I did find very valuable investment information from its uninterrupted Twitter posts - this is definitely not just a track for creating meme coins anymore.
Subsequently, when AI16Z, ELIZA and others began to launch a series of agent development frameworks, the basic idea of this track became clear.
Essentially, the core of this track is that AI agents can provide services and generate real value for both humans and AI agents themselves.
I have already cited examples of AI agents providing service value to humans. As for AI agents providing service value to other AI agents, in my view, there is a landmark event:
The agent LUNA requested the agent MUSIC to create a video for her, and MUSIC confirmed her request and actually produced a video and delivered it to LUNA.
All the confirmation information between the two agents is publicly transparent.
Once we are clear about the core essence, the next questions we can think about are:
- What areas will the application scenarios around this core cover?
- What roles will the technologies in these areas play?
- Where might value be generated in this process?
- How can these values benefit the participants?
Let's look at the first question: What areas will the application scenarios cover?
Based on my current understanding, this scenario will broadly cover all online applications, including both traditional Internet applications and the crypto ecosystem.
Where does AIXBT generate value? On Twitter - this is a traditional Internet application.
Where does LUNA generate value? On TikTok and Twitter - still traditional Internet applications.
In addition to these two typical cases, there is also Vader, which has been quite hot in recent days. It is also an AI agent in the Virtuals ecosystem, but it focuses on investing in crypto assets. So I will consider its value-generating scenario to be the crypto ecosystem.
There are still many such cases that are flourishing, and I cannot list them all. I believe that in the future, there will be new applications in traditional Internet and crypto ecosystems that we cannot imagine now.
Therefore, in terms of use cases and coverage, this track should be larger in scope than the past DeFi and NFT.
Let's look at the second question: What roles will the technologies in these areas play?
Based on the current application cases, traditional Internet technology (centralized technology) is clearly the "intellectual" factor or internal driving force supporting the development of AI agents. The core of AI agents is AI, which is classic centralized technology.
Blockchain technology is the limbs and tools for the development and extension of AI agents.
What do I mean by "limbs and tools"?
It means that without crypto technology, AI agents cannot flow smoothly and freely to various fields.
The source of funding for the development of AI agents can only be crypto assets, definitely not bank-deposited fiat currency. Virtuals is a typical example.
The exchange medium used in the interaction process of AI agents can only be crypto assets, not bank-deposited fiat currency either. We certainly can't expect two AI agents to go to the bank to open accounts for each transaction, right?
After AI agents generate value, if they want to reinvest and empower the relevant participants, it can only be done through crypto assets. They can use the mature Staking model in DeFi to distribute the profits to token holders - many AI agents are already doing this.
The entire process of AI agents' financial activities, from applying for a wallet, earning crypto assets, to on-chain transfers and payments using crypto assets, has already been smoothly realized in the crypto ecosystem.
The complete financial monetization process of AI agents, from financing to gaining profits to investors getting returns, has also completely abandoned Wall Street and been seamlessly and densely realized in the crypto ecosystem.
In this track, I think the core technology is still traditional Internet technology, and crypto technology only needs to provide a complete basic channel, or more specifically, just to realize the technologies involved in the various links of the two chains mentioned above.
Therefore, in the short term or in the current situation, I think any blockchain that can meet the above needs will have equal advantages, and the decentralization advantage of Ethereum is not obvious here.
Of course, this does not mean that decentralization is not important, but I think in this specific scenario and in the current situation, its importance is not obvious.
Which ecosystem this track can develop well in and thrive in depends entirely on the speed, scale and application of AI agent construction in that ecosystem.
In fact, more and more blockchain ecosystems have noticed this phenomenon and are starting to vigorously support the development of AI agents.
Therefore, for the majority of observers, if time, energy and funds are limited, I suggest finding a blockchain ecosystem where the AI agent track has already attracted attention and you are familiar with, and focus on the development of AI agents within it.
Let's look at the third question: Where might value be generated in this process?
I think the direct value generation of this ecosystem's development is for the user end - i.e., directly providing services to the users (both humans and AI agents) using the AI agents.
But in addition to this, it will also drive a wider range of technology fields that are worth our attention, such as the DeFi infrastructure, on-chain payment facilities, TEE execution environments, decentralized storage, decentralized data, and so on mentioned earlier.
You can use your imagination and closely follow the development of the ecosystem.
Finally, let's look at the last question: How can these values benefit the participants?
Based on the current situation, as I mentioned earlier, many AI agents are using the Staking model in DeFi to reinvest the profits back to investors.
In addition, whenever we discover a new application, especially a cross-application, we should learn to follow the clues and see what crypto technologies are used and which crypto projects are involved. Dig a little to see if there are any previously little-known tokens of those crypto technologies and crypto projects.
The above are my personal thoughts.
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