The largest AI agents token on the Solana Chain by market cap is currently ai16z, which started as the first AI fund manager. The plan is for holders of the ai16z token to be able to influence its investment decisions, a concept known as "AI Investment DAO".
However, the AI agents development framework Eliza, developed by the ai16z team, has been gaining more attention, and projects developed using this framework will airdrop tokens to the fund managed by ai16z. As a result, ai16z is now also riding the halo of the entire Eliza ecosystem and is generally seen as the representative token for "AI agents development frameworks", often compared to the Virtuals Protocol, the most mainstream agents development platform on the Base Chain.
ai16z Founder: ai16z and a16z are Completely Unrelated
Perhaps due to the fact that ai16z has been hitting new highs this week, with its market cap briefly exceeding $2.7 billion, and its market heat continues to rise, it has also sparked speculation about its relationship with the well-known venture capital firm a16z. Regarding this matter, ai16z founder Shaw tweeted a clarification today, stating that ai16z and a16z are completely unrelated, and bluntly said:
"If you go buy a coin just because you saw a picture with an abnormally large chest and some ridiculous topics, and think they are related, you are just too naive."
He later said that it's actually fine, because he's a fool himself.
According to reports, the reason why ai16z is named similarly to a16z is that the AI Agent was trained on data from a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen, and the goal is to outperform him in investment performance.
As of now, Marc Andreessen's most direct connection to ai16z is limited to the fact that he retweeted ai16z's image and official X account link at the end of October last year, which is speculated to be because he found it interesting.
Contributor: No Need to Worry about ai16z Infringing on a16z's Trademark
Additionally, regarding the issue of whether ai16z is suspected of infringing on a16z's trademark, ai16z project contributor @0xjunkdogg stated that there is no need to worry, and provided the following reasons:
1. They have already communicated with a16z via email.
2. a16z's CTO is also in the ai16z Discord group, although he has remained silent, he seems to be observing in the background.
3. The real Marc Andreessen has previously retweeted content related to ai16z.
4. ai16z and a16z are both pushing for the legalization of DAOs (the process of legalizing DAO organizations in the US, as a16z has previously launched a DAO legal framework, which is currently only legal in one state, and everyone is working to make it more comprehensive).
Projects Related to ai16z
Recently, Shaw also provided a brief explanation of their organizational structure and the relationships between the various entities:
- ai16z is a permissionless DAO involving the tokens $ai16z and $degenai
- elizaOS is an open-source AI Agent framework
- Eliza Labs focuses on developing elizaOS
- ELIZA (uppercase) is managed by an independent team, with official support but not officially issued
Previously, the uppercase ELIZA and lowercase eliza had caused confusion, but as time has passed, the uppercase ELIZA now has a higher market cap and is more prominent. Recently, the ELIZA team announced that Shaw has officially joined as an advisor.
According to GitHub Trending data, Eliza ranked first on the trend chart in the past month, with 6,232 new stars added, and a total of 9,126 stars, fully demonstrating the high heat and popularity of the project.
