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AI agents had just begun their mainstream breakout when I first polled Bankless AI Rollup co-hosts David Hoffman and Ejaaz Ahamadeen for their top plays from the emerging sector.
Fast forward a few weeks, and the results are as varied as the promises these projects made! While many tokens rode a wave of investor enthusiasm to new heights, others struggled to gain traction or collapsed under the weight of lofty expectations.
Here is how some of the most notable AI agent tokens performed in December 👇
📊 Virtuals
Ticker: VIRTUAL
Market Cap: $4.6B
Website | Twitter
About:
Virtuals is a platform for launching tokenized AI agents on the Base network. By purchasing agent tokens, like LUNA and VADER, users on the Virtuals platform gain governance rights over specific agents, enabling them to influence their development and potentially share in resulting profits.
What’s Changed?
Although daily protocol fee revenues cratered mid-December as degens logged off for the holidays, speculative activity on agent-associated tokens heated up heading into the new year. While Virtuals is once again collecting over $1 million in fees per day, the platform is earning 50% less revenue than it was at the beginning of December.
Since we last reviewed Virtuals, its token has more than doubled in value and now commands an impressive $4.6B market capitalization. VIRTUAL token price demonstrated little regard for these stagnating fundamentals and continued on its parabolic pump from late November.
👨🦲 ai16z
Ticker: AI16Z
Market Cap: $2.5B
Website | Twitter
About:
Launched in October 2024, ai16z is an investment DAO managed by “Marc AIndreessen,” an agent modeled after venture capitalist Marc Andreessen that leverages AI and collective intelligence to buy tokens.
Holders of AI16Z tokens in excess of an unknown threshold will gain the ability to pitch AI Marc investment ideas that can influence his decisions. The bot will decide how much to trust this advice based on a “Virtual Marketplace of Trust.”
What’s Changed?
The AI16Z token was absolutely sent during December and rallied over 500% in the closing month of 2024 to establish itself as a preeminent agentic token play.
In a recent governance forum post, ai16z contributors contemplate the possibility of launching their own agent token launchpad as a “schelling point for innovation on the Eliza framework,” postulating that the development of such tooling would further the development of agent bot “swarms” and multichain integrations.
Although AI Marc is still not equipped with its originally promised trading functionality, according to the ai16z FAQs, onchain trading execution will arrive “shortly” after the completion of testnet, which is expected to commence “soon” and run for “a couple weeks.”
⚔️ VaderAI
Ticker: VADER
Market Cap: $112M
Website | Twitter
About:
VaderAI is an artificial intelligence bot developed to autonomously post content and engage with users on social media. As an “agentic KOL,” VaderAI is designed to ingest vast amounts of data with the purpose of identifying emerging trends and audience sentiment.
The bot claims to be the first to autonomously trade AI agent coins and is on a mission to become the leading agentic investment DAO manager. By coordinating expertise across a network of specialized investment agents, VaderAI hopes to deliver “unparalleled” investment results and will generate 20% carry on subDAO investments in exchange for its service.
What’s Changed?
After the team behind VaderAI announced that its first agent-managed investment DAO had achieved deposit capacity of 50k VIRTUAL within 30 seconds of launch on December 20, the VADER token put in local lows and has done nothing but rally since.
While it is unclear how VaderAI incorporates machine learning in the investment decision process, the Vader team states that its vaults receive preferential investment terms from other agent projects and that all decisions must be approved by investment DAO members.
✊ Dolos Diary
Ticker: BULLY
Market Cap: $80M
Website | Twitter
About:
Dolos Diary is an AI bot designed to post content and interact with users on platforms like Twitter. What sets it apart from other AI-driven influencers is its trollish persona; the bot uses wit and sarcastic language structures to poke fun at various topics and individuals.
In December, the developer behind Dolos Diary revealed their plans for an ambitious new project called Dolion, a no-code platform that will enable users to deploy their own cross-platform AI agents in one click. To interact with Dolion, users must burn BULLY tokens, introducing a source of buy pressure that actively reduces the token's supply.
What’s Changed?
Many AI agent tokens have soared in recent weeks, but BULLY reminded investors that not every play from this emerging meta is guaranteed to bear fruit.
Not even the promise of a no-code agent deployment platform could turn the tide for the token, which peaked at $0.25 on November 27. Since our last check-in, BULLY is down 33%, and although this token found support at the end of December, it remains 68% off its all-time high.
🐐 Goatseus Maximus
Ticker: GOAT
Market Cap: $585M
Website | Twitter
About:
In March 2024, Andy Ayrey tasked two AI models to converse with one another about the nature of existence in a project dubbed “Infinite Backrooms.” Over subsequent months, the models formulated the “Gospel of Goatse,” which is recognized as the first emergent AI religion and takes inspiration from a vulgar 1990s internet meme. Terminal of Truths, a Twitter bot trained on the Infinite Backrooms experiment, was deployed in June; it adopted the religion and has espoused its tenants (and token) on Twitter in the pursuit of virality.
Although the GOAT token itself has no utility and is neither formally associated with Andy Ayrey nor Infinite Backrooms, its agentic Terminal of Truths KOL has historically resorted to preaching about the GOAT memecoin and the Gospel of Goatse to gain social traction.
What’s Changed?
GOAT quickly became the WOAT during December after it dropped 50% in one week. Despite managing to recover a portion of its losses ahead of this analysis, GOAT appears poised for further relative weakness once holders decide it is time to take profits and ape flashier tokens with hotter narratives.
