In the current wave of digitalization, the integration of AI and Web3 is reshaping numerous domains in an unstoppable manner. In the first half of 2024, the Web3 sector had 1,240 projects that raised a total of $7.52 billion, with a significant increase in funding for the AI sector. In the second quarter of 2024 alone, the AI sector raised $24 billion, accounting for a large portion of the total investment. Since the end of the year, AI concept tokens have continued to gain momentum, leveraging the wealth-creating effect of Meme coins and the bull market effect of Trump, becoming one of the most closely watched and favored concepts in the market. AI is bringing unprecedented opportunities and transformations to the crypto world, let us delve into the current state of development and future potential of this frontier field.
AI+Social: UXLINK and Pop Social
Let's review 2024 and explore the development achievements in the AI+Social domain from various perspectives:
In terms of user experience enhancement, social platforms using AI technology have achieved remarkable results in user matching and content recommendation. The user matching accuracy has improved by 30% compared to the past, and the average click-through rate of content recommendations has increased by 25%, leading to a 20-minute increase in the average daily user interaction time and a significant enhancement in user stickiness.
From the perspective of data security and privacy protection, more than 40% of emerging social platforms have adopted decentralized storage technologies based on blockchain, reducing the risk of user data leakage by 45% and increasing user trust in the platform's data security to over 80%. Meanwhile, about 30% of the platforms have introduced AI-driven smart contracts to automate the social incentive mechanism, resulting in a 50% growth in the number of users participating in incentive activities and greatly stimulating user enthusiasm.
In terms of investment and financing, in the first half of 2024, the AI+Web3 social domain attracted more than 50 investment projects, with a total financing amount of $300 million. The influx of capital has provided a strong impetus for the development of this field. User data has also shown explosive growth, with the monthly active users of the relevant platforms currently exceeding 50 million, and the new user growth rate reaching 35%.
Looking ahead to 2025, the NX.one Research Institute believes that this field has unlimited potential. With the progress of AI technology, the accuracy of emotion analysis and natural language processing is expected to reach over 90% and 85% respectively, enabling more precise understanding of user emotions and intentions, and providing highly personalized social services. Under the trend of decentralization, the market share of decentralized social platforms is expected to break the partial monopoly of traditional social media giants. The trend of cross-platform and cross-domain social integration is evident, and AI will help different social networks connect seamlessly, building a larger and more diverse social ecosystem.
UXLINK is a new Socialfi infrastructure project built on the Telegram platform, focusing on "acquaintance social networking." Since its launch in April 2023, it has developed rapidly and has become one of the largest Web3 social platforms globally. It has the following characteristics and advantages:
Vast user base and high activity: As of April 30, 2024, UXLINK has covered more than 95,000 groups, with 5.38 million verified users and 7.73 million group members. Its daily active user peak can reach around 743,000, with over 730,000 unique active wallet addresses in the past 24 hours and over 1.65 million in the past 30 days, ranking first in the social sector. The total assets in its smart contracts exceed $1.44 million, with a total inflow of $11.54 million in the past 30 days.
Innovative "Link-to-Earn" mechanism: Users can earn Arbitrum wallets and points by sharing invitation links, inviting others to join the community, and activating the registration bot. Completing tasks, minting social relationship-based NFTs, and building their own communities can also earn UXUY points, which are linked to airdrop amounts, effectively incentivizing user participation and social network expansion.
Dual token economic model: UXUY is a utility token used for community incentives and service fee payments, with a portion being burned; UXLINK is a governance token with a fixed supply of 1 billion, to be released after listing and airdropped to active users, builders, and partners.
Powerful social data graph: UXLINK's UXSBT and UXGRAPH provide users with a social graph, successfully transferring Web2 social relationships to Web3 social assets, providing valuable data foundations for developers and AI projects.
Extensive ecosystem cooperation: UXLINK has collaborated with multiple AI and GameFi projects, launching the "UXLINK Social Ecosystem Alliance." The initial ecosystem projects include Bubble AI, 1 Gen Labs, Pond, MetaCene, BacGames, Space Nation, EarlyBird 3, and more. By cooperating with different types of applications, UXLINK has enriched its own ecosystem and provided unique data value empowerment for its partners, jointly promoting the development of the AI+Web3 social domain.
Pop Social is another example of the integration of AI and social, aiming to build an AI-driven social network that enables content creators and consumers to capture value in exchange for the value they bring to the platform. Currently, Pop Social is using DID, verifiable reputation technology, and an AI-driven AIGC suite to help users create content. It has raised over $4 million from investors such as Fundamental Labs, Ceras Ventures, Chainlink, and Fusion Labs.
In fact, there are many projects that combine specific scenarios with AI, like Pop Social. Although the social sector has been subject to FUD, the token issuance of content-based projects like Pump.fun can be seen as a transformation of social. Especially for social products, the gathering of cultural memes inherent to them, by issuing their original or derivative content as Memes, to some extent aligns with the current trend of AI Meme Launches.
AI+Infra: Sentient
In 2024, the rapid development of AI technology has driven explosive growth in the data infrastructure domain:
In terms of technological innovation, more than 200 related projects worldwide have focused on the R&D of data storage, management, and security technologies, with a cumulative R&D investment of $1.5 billion. New data storage technologies have increased storage capacity by an average of 3 times and read/write speeds by 5 times; intelligent data management systems can achieve over 90% automated data classification and retrieval; advanced data security technologies have reduced the occurrence of data leakage incidents by 40%.
In data quality and labeling, the data labeling market size reached $100 million in the first half of 2024, driven by the surging demand for high-quality data by AI. This has spawned more than 500 professional data labeling companies, with over 100,000 employees.
From the perspective of investment and financing, and user data, in the first half of 2024, the AI+data infrastructure domain attracted more than 300 investment projects, with a total financing amount of $5 billion. The monthly active users of the relevant platforms have exceeded 300 million, with a new user growth rate of 30%.
The NX.one Research Institute is optimistic about the future development of the AI+Social domain, and expects that more than 500 new projects will enter the market by 2025, further driving technological innovation. The integration of blockchain and AI will enable at least 40% of data to be decentralized stored and shared, significantly improving data security and credibility. The application of AI technology in data labeling, cleaning, and quality assessment will become more mature, providing higher-quality data for AI model training.
Sentient is an innovative project focused on the AI+data infrastructure domain, aiming to build a decentralized AI ecosystem and provide comprehensive data infrastructure support for the development of AI. It has the following outstanding features and advantages:
Prestigious technical team: Sentient has a strong team, with Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal deeply involved, as well as industry experts such as EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan serving as advisors, along with professors from Princeton University and the Indian Institute of Science.
Strong financial support: Due to the huge potential of the track and the strong technical strength of the team, in July 2024, Sentient successfully completed a $85 million seed round of financing, co-led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures, which was also the highest single financing amount in the AI+web3 infrastructure sector in the first half of 2024.
Decentralized open-source collaboration: Sentient is based on the principles of decentralization and open-source, using blockchain technology to break through traditional centralized management. It incentivizes global participants to contribute data, computing power, algorithms and other resources, realizing distributed data storage and sharing, and protecting the rights and interests of data owners. At the same time, it has built an open platform for developers and researchers to freely use and optimize AI models and data, promoting exchange and innovation, and solving the problem of centralization.
Innovative incentive mechanism: Sentient has designed an "activity" mechanism to incentivize participants. Each "activity" has clear goals and evaluation criteria, and participants receive corresponding rewards for completing tasks. This incentive system stimulates the enthusiasm and creativity of community members, encouraging more people to contribute data and optimize models, and promoting the continuous development and improvement of the AI data infrastructure.
AI+Assets: AI16z, AI Pool
In 2024, the application of AI in this field has risen rapidly, and more than 50 innovative projects like AI16z and AI Pool have emerged in the market, attracting a lot of attention and capital investment. From the data of public chains, Base, Solana, Sui and other public chains have shown active net inflows, providing strong infrastructure support for AI-based asset issuance projects, which in turn promoted the development of these projects. These projects collectively raised over $1 billion in financing in the first half of 2024, providing strong support for technology R&D and business expansion.
These innovative projects play a key role in asset pricing, risk prediction and investment decision-making by leveraging AI technology. Asset issuance projects using AI technology have a 20% higher success rate in financing compared to traditional projects, and the issuance cycle is shortened by an average of 30%. NX.one Research Institute believes that as AI technology continues to be upgraded, its advantages in asset pricing, risk assessment, and market forecasting will become more prominent. It is estimated that more than 100 new projects will enter the market in 2025, further driving industry innovation. The integration of AI and Web3 technology will become closer, and the scale of asset issuance using AI + Web3 technology is expected to reach $50 billion, an increase of 150% compared to 2024, with the market share expected to increase from the current 10% to 25%.
As a representative project in the AI + asset issuance field, AI16z, with its advanced AI algorithms and models, conducts in-depth analysis of multi-dimensional information such as market data and project fundamentals. Its intelligent agent Eliza autonomously manages the on-chain liquidity pool, achieving an annualized yield of over 60%. AI Pool has attracted more than 5,000 registered investors and manages assets of $100 million. Through AI-driven smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), it realizes automated asset issuance and management. In addition, AI16z also provides investors with real-time investment recommendations and strategy adjustments to help them better cope with market changes.
AI Pool has created a new asset issuance model, using AI-driven smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations to realize automated asset issuance and management. In this process, AI technology runs through the entire process, from the initial pricing of assets to subsequent risk monitoring, providing accurate support. Investors can participate in the governance and decision-making of AI Pool, not only to share the development results of the project, but also to influence the direction and strategy of asset issuance to a certain extent. This innovative model has attracted the attention of many investors, and as of now, AI Pool has attracted more than 5,000 registered investors, with an asset management scale of $100 million.
AI+Gaming: Raiinmaker, Today, DeepLink
In 2024, AI has been widely applied and rapidly developed in the field of gaming and entertainment. Many game companies have invested a large amount of funds in AI-related R&D, and according to incomplete statistics, the R&D investment in this field has increased by 30% compared to the previous year, reaching about $2 billion. This investment has brought significant results, and a large number of games have begun to introduce AI technology to enhance the gaming experience. Data shows that the number of games using AI technology has grown by 40% compared to 2023, with more than 2,000 games applying AI technology to varying degrees.
These applications are mainly reflected in the intelligent behavior of game characters, scene generation, and content recommendation. For example, the AI-powered intelligent character behavior system can make the reactions of game characters more realistic, and the average user rating of such games has increased by 25%. At the same time, AI-assisted scene generation technology has made game scenes more rich and diverse, with an average increase of 35% in the richness of game scenes.
A report by DataIntelo shows that the global AI gaming market size was $1.2 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach $10.93 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.3%. By then, AI will achieve greater breakthroughs in game plot creation and personalized gaming experiences. It is expected that more than 5,000 games will deeply integrate AI technology, realizing highly personalized customization of game content to meet the needs of different players. This will attract more users to the gaming and entertainment market, with the number of users expected to grow from 1 billion in 2024 to 1.5 billion in 2025, further driving the industry towards a more intelligent, personalized and innovative direction.
The NX.one Research Institute in this field will focus on projects related to AI games that combine other popular elements, such as the potential of social and the hot financing of infrastructure this year:
Today is an eye-catching Web3 social simulation game. It is currently focusing on developing intelligent NPCs based on generative AI and no-code creator tools. Through these innovative features, the game can provide players with richer and more personalized experiences. It is worth mentioning that Today has completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by Sfermion and Big Brain Holdings, which provides a solid financial support for its subsequent development and promotion.
Raiinmaker is building decentralized AI tools and Web3 infrastructure to support sports, gaming and entertainment projects. Users can train AI models on their iOS or Android phones and receive rewards proportional to their impact on the AI models. Raiinmaker has raised a total of $10 million, with a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Jump Capital and Cypher Capital.
DeepLink is a decentralized AI cloud gaming protocol that provides ultra-low latency game rendering solutions for AAA games and cloud arcades, supporting 1ms ultra-low latency and 8K high-resolution gaming experiences through AI, blockchain and streaming technology. DeepLink has completed a total of $8 million in angel and Series A financing, with a valuation of $100 million. The investors include Gobi Ventures, Hycons, DBC, ROCK Ventures and others.
Conclusion
In 2024, AI + Web3 has shown strong development vitality in multiple fields, from social to infrastructure, from asset issuance to gaming and entertainment, all of which have achieved remarkable results. With the continuous innovation and integration of technology, I believe that in the future, "AI + Web3" will continue to expand its boundaries, create more possibilities, and bring us a richer and more diverse digital world.
