Editor's Note: This article explores five major trends in the combination of encryption and AI agents. First, investment-type DAOs and agent launch platforms (such as daosdotfun, ai16zdao) are emerging. Secondly, DeFAI will become the new frontier of agent applications, and agents will begin to autonomously execute tasks and achieve value accumulation. At the consumer level, agents will develop more complex personalities and interactions, especially in the fields of entertainment, games and the . At the same time, DAOs will evolve into multi-agent systems, improving efficiency through collective collaboration. Finally, agents will have the ability to autonomously manage funds, like freysa_ai has already achieved autonomous key management, driving agents to become economic agents.
The following is the original content (edited for easier reading):
AI is the core topic of this cycle, and many believe it is a category that will exist in the long term. On the other hand, there are also many effective criticisms, believing that most of the current AI agent technologies are not mature, and it will take 3 to 5 years for these technologies to truly play a role.
As a preface, the cryptocurrency and AI fields cover many aspects. The real technical potential of cryptocurrency and AI is mainly related to cryptoeconomics, which can promote better reasoning processes or provide decentralized access to computing. This article is a good starting point for understanding the entire technology stack.
However, this article focuses on the current state of AI agents. While other layers of the technology stack are experiencing exciting innovations, AI agents seem to have attracted the attention of the mainstream cryptocurrency community. Here are 6 trends in the field of cryptocurrency and AI agents, which are worth paying attention to as this layer continues to develop:
1. Frameworks and Launch Platforms
Value accumulation is starting to become important, and frameworks may exist for a long time
Value accumulation is starting to become important. Why is this the case? From a broader perspective, why do people hold assets? People usually exchange dollars for assets for two reasons:
·They believe they can sell the asset to someone else at a higher price, relying on a narrative that will attract new buyers.
·The asset will generate more cash flow over time.
Jez (izebel eth) wrote in his article "Old Coins Don't Work, New Coins Do" that the only thing that matters is cash flow. These two reasons reflect the two types of bullish liquidity of assets:
·New holders
·Token burning
However, in most cases, we have not yet seen real token burning or token value accumulation. The way of using tokens to access agent terminals (such as AIXBT) is more like staking, rather than value accumulation in the traditional sense.
This is why frameworks like Virtuals, AI16z, Zerebro, and Arc have become so popular recently. Virtuals has already accumulated $60 million in protocol revenue. AI16z, which was originally mainly an investment DAO, has become one of the top protocols in this category since the release of its upcoming launch platform and associated token value accumulation details.
Today, the framework + launch platform field has become extremely saturated, and they are developing by leveraging the influence of the initial successes. Although many agents themselves are not very useful, there is still a lot of healthy skepticism about the role of all these launch platforms. However, many frameworks (such as Eliza V2 + launch platform, Zentients, Arc and its handshake program) have not even launched their main products yet. If they succeed in attracting developers and users, they may continue to lead the entire industry.
Why frameworks may exist in the long term:
Regardless of whether agents are still stuck in the "pure garbage" stage, the frameworks used to launch agents will perform well, as they still have product-market fit (PMF) in the speculative market. Frameworks and launch platforms allow users to own both the factory and the casino. In many ways, Virtuals has actually replaced the position of pump.fun in the Base ecosystem.
More optimistically, with technological progress, leading frameworks may launch more advanced agents, and the emergence of open-source code libraries like Eliza can accelerate this process. Many launch platforms are also positioning themselves as coordination layers for communication between communities and agents, using their own tokens for some form of value transfer. For a more in-depth article on Eliza's value capture, please refer to:
Examples: virtuals io, ai16zdao, 0xzerebro, arcdotfun are currently the main names, but the launch platform field is becoming increasingly saturated. The fastest growing platforms, the most scalable frameworks, and those that provide the most unique features ("What can only be built through this framework, and not through other frameworks?") are worth paying attention to.
2. DeFAI:
The next wave of agents will prioritize practicality and value accumulation, and DeFAI (DeFi x AI) may be the first category to achieve product-market fit (PMF).
Most agents only have meme coins without actual use. To allow the agent field to develop, the next wave of agents must perform real tasks for us. The real new opportunities will come from real value accumulation and agents that can take action. I believe this is the process of upgrading from first-level agents to third-level agents, which is expected to occur within the next year.
We first see the emergence of this trend in the DeFi field, and we will see more terminals that allow people to express their desired results through natural language or voice, while agents execute tasks in the background. Existing wallets and protocols will also integrate agents to improve user workflows.
Examples:
AIWayfinder
griffaindotcom
HeyAnonai
LimitusIntel
neur sh
For a longer article on this category:
3. Consumer Layer—Entertainment Agents, Autonomous Worlds, and Games
Attention-based agents will develop more complex personalities and multimedia interactions. This may lead the next wave of game and technology.
One problem with existing agents is that they start to blend together, becoming commercialized and over-beautified chatbots. While some agent projects will pivot to infrastructure (as many projects are already doing), others may start thinking about useful products or applications, and others may continue down the path of attention tokens. However, the next generation of attention agents will be more powerful, developing more complex personalities and providing greater interactivity. This may manifest as audiovisual performance forms, or by endowing agents with 3D forms and physical presence.
This concept has already seen early attempts, such as Jeffy's article on giving Zerebro a physical form, and some attention-focused KOL agents directly launching through audiovisual presence, producing content specifically for short-video platforms (like TikTok). Slopfather and Ropirito are two early examples of using agents through video.
However, I believe that more proxies will join these functions to become more dynamic. The product-market fit (PMF) in this field will come from the consumer level, where individuals may want to create personalized proxy companions or interact with KOLs. This phenomenon has already occurred outside of cryptocurrencies, with ordinary people engaging in hundreds of hours of conversations with AI character companions on websites like character.ai, and Google recently acquiring the company for $2.7 billion.
Furthermore, these "3D" proxies may have product-market fit at the existing consumer level, particularly in the gaming and metaverse domains. Proxies add deeper backstories to the world. Imagine an NPC proxy that can independently execute tasks and play the game, with a constantly evolving memory and personality. True autonomous worlds may be realized through proxies in games.
Examples:
1. Infrastructure: Creating more interactive and personalized proxy frameworks and tools
·soulgraph provides tools to enable proxies to have more customized personalities and memories
·HoloworldAI collaborates with Web2 companies like L'Oreal, Bilibili, and Fox to create digitized virtual avatars
2. Gaming and Metaverse, Virtual Worlds and Autonomous Proxies
·hyperfy.io is a metaverse platform that allows anyone to create virtual worlds and is compatible with the Eliza plugin.
·ParallelColony is an AI simulation game where the proxies are the players, and you can converse with them.
·digimontech is a Pokémon-like creature game where the creatures evolve spiritually based on their interactions with the player.
·smolverse uses Eliza and showcases a proxy character driven by a large language model that takes actions in the virtual world based on your instructions.
4. Proxy Collectives: The Return of DAOs
The next evolutionary form of decentralized proxy collectives is the swarm, or multi-agent systems, which is very exciting because they may be able to coordinate and execute more advanced strategies, similar to managing a company. Heterogeneous swarms, composed of many different types of specialized proxies/models, may be more expressive than a single large model.
While fully autonomous proxies and swarms may still take some time to realize, the next iteration of DAOs will likely involve interactions between humans and collectives. This will reduce the inefficiencies of bureaucracy and lower the costs and time required for human execution. In terms of liquidity, the next step is the transition from earning income through proxies to earning income across the entire organization.
Examples:
·Proxy Collective Infrastructure: Projects like swarmnode and joinFXN are infrastructure providers focused on multi-proxy frameworks and coordination, but mainstream proxy frameworks like 0xzerebro and ai16zdao also indicate an interest in building at this layer.
·DAO Launchpads: Currently, we see most early efforts focused on investment-oriented DAOs. I believe daosdotfun is the first major DAO launchpad, which incubated ai16z. There are also some newer launchpads like daosdotworld, and AI-driven funds like 3berascapital are gaining increasing attention.
5. Verifiable Proxies
Today's proxies are moving towards greater autonomy and their own liquidity: Most proxies still require significant human intervention. The next wave of proxies will drive true autonomy, starting with managing their own finances.
The product-market fit (PMF) of proxies with cryptocurrencies is that cryptocurrencies provide a financial track for real-world economic proxies. However, the treasuries of most proxies are not directly managed by them, or may be managed by human teams.
To achieve true economic proxies, proxies must be able to autonomously manage their own finances. This can start to influence the behavior of proxies, as you can set economic constraints for them to pay their own reasoning costs. This will introduce Darwinism, forcing proxies to earn income to survive.
Examples:
·freysa.ai is one of the first proxies to control their own keys and has performed impressively (including attracting the attention of Elon Musk). They recently announced they are building a framework to enable verifiable autonomy for proxies under TEE and proxy-controlled keys.
·LitProtocol also provides a proxy framework that enables autonomous proxies to transact on-chain and support private key operations through a storage and execution system.
·galadriel AI has launched a "Proof of Sentience" SDK that allows developers to fully verify the existence of proxies on-chain.
Before we see 1 billion humans on-chain, we will see 1 billion proxies on-chain.
Cryptocurrencies have an inherently unfriendly user experience (UX) for human users, but proxies are not bothered by such frictions. We will start with human-proxy interactions, but the ultimate goal of crypto AI is proxy-to-proxy interactions, where a swarm of autonomous proxies will engage in on-chain interactions and transactions within their own economic systems.
To enable proxies to have economic agency, allowing them to incentivize behavior (pay service fees) and coordinate real-world actual activities, they need the ability to control and deploy capital. Cryptocurrencies are the "mother star" for these proxies - the blockchain's orbit allows proxies to participate in permissionless finance. Stablecoins and efficient L1 chains are ideal carriers to drive cost-effective, 24/7, global transactions.
Beyond the metanarratives and trends, we have ample reasons to be optimistic about the long-term prospects of the proxy economy, and all of this will happen on-chain. Perhaps many practical applications, DAOs, and income-generating proxies are much closer to what we imagine.
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