At the beginning of the new year, the AI Agent track continued to soar. In less than 3 months, this emerging track has risen strongly with an increase of hundreds of times, becoming the dark horse of the crypto market in 2025. Behind this round of rise, technology and market demand have formed a positive interaction, not only driving the track from short-term speculation to long-term development, but also bringing a brand-new narrative to the crypto industry.
I. AI Agent: A Hot Research Direction in the AI Field
The term 'AI agents' comes from OpenAI's roadmap. Sam Altman has divided the capabilities that AI should have into 5 parts: dialogue (such as ChatGPT, capable of conversational chatting); reasoning (logical reasoning like humans); agency (autonomous learning, decision-making and task execution); innovation (creative technological breakthroughs); and organization (the ultimate form, capable of managing and operating human organizations).
We are currently in the third stage of AI agents, which is not only in the field, but also the hottest research direction in the entire AI field. Tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Twitter have all entered this field. Sam Altman has mentioned in multiple public occasions that Agent is a key direction for the future development of AI, and AI Agent will change the way humans interact with technology.
The current AI agents are still in the early stage, only the most basic reflex-type agents, and there is still a large gap to achieve the goal of autonomous planning and execution of complex tasks. However, this also indicates that the hype cycle of this field will continue for several years, and any technological progress will cause a huge wave in the market.
II. Crypto+Agent is a Viable Path
When OpenAI just released ChatGPT, the crypto protocols in the industry still rushed into the infrastructure based on inertial thinking. A large number of computing power platforms emerged, and a batch of AI + DePIN infrastructure was born, with grand visions more oriented towards the B-end, with extremely low user participation. In terms of implementation and user demand, they seem like castles in the air. After years of exploration, everyone has found that this path is not viable.
When AI has evolved from grabbing computing power to the Agent stage, combined with the impact of the Memecoin craze, it has become a brand-new viable path by launching Memecoin projects, which can quickly land products. For example, AIXBT is providing market analysis services for over 100,000 users; the AI live streaming internet celebrity Luna on TikTok can provide brand marketing services; the investment-type Agent Ai16Z obtains market information on-chain and off-chain, and automatically trades tokens.
The series of functional AI Agents allow users to directly obtain usage experience. In this process, the agents can also cleverly borrow the community growth path of Memecoins to achieve rapid product iteration, which is low-cost and fast. After sufficient market education and promotion, the grand vision infrastructure can be built on this basis, and community culture and fundamentals will no longer be contradictory. +Agent has become a viable path.
III. The Development Stages of AI Agents in the Crypto Market
The development of AI Agents in the market has gone through the process from AI meme to standalone AI applications, and then to the AI Agent Launchpad. It is currently in the evolution of the AI Agent framework and standards.
In the AI meme stage, the Agent is mainly used to issue assets, which is pure meme, driven by market hotspots and community emotions. With the evolution of technology, standalone AI applications with certain practical functions have emerged, such as social media posting, investment analysis, and fund management. These applications are in line with the needs of users, and have been hyped by the market, resulting in a wealth effect, and then the coin issuance platforms have emerged, and the standalone AI applications have gradually expanded to more valuable scenarios.
As more and more different types of Agents appear, the market has begun to explore the collaboration between different projects, and various Agent frameworks and standards have emerged, starting to build their own ecosystems. This type of underlying infrastructure can help developers easily and conveniently deploy various smarter Agent applications, and promote a large amount of social and economic activities between Agents and Agents, which may give rise to new demands such as Agent identities, Agent asset accounts, Agent social networks, Agent settlement gateways, and Agent governance DAOs. Under the empowerment of AI Agents, we will move from human-Agent interaction to Agent-Agent interaction, and then a group of autonomous Agents will interact and trade on the chain, and be responsible for their own economic situation. At this stage, will fully release its potential and value in borderless collaboration, trustless networks, and 24/7 uninterrupted operation.
The framework and standards have a large imagination space due to the support of complex technical logic, but they are currently in a state of chaos. Of course, their development also depends heavily on the iterative development of AI technologies such as large models from Internet giants.
IV. AI Will Be the Biggest Trend in the Crypto Market This Year
Crypto market investment has always relied on imagination-driven. The assets that have been hyped in the past are all like this. For example, the early used the narrative of traditional financial revolution, and the concepts of and depicted a future where everyone lives in the virtual world, both of which are highly imaginative. The grander the narrative, the more novel the concept, the more capital will chase it, and the higher the market's valuation ceiling for it. Even if some products do not meet the traditional Internet standards, as long as they propose new gameplay and new hope, they can reach an amazing market capitalization during the bull market.
Now, has not successfully attracted traditional financial assets to be traded on-chain, and the concept of has not been successfully implemented by giants like Facebook. Currently, in the circle, AI is undoubtedly the most imaginative topic, and other concepts can hardly match it.
In addition, in actual implementation, unlike , AI has real value. Some current AI agent projects have already generated revenue, such as Virtuals; there are some like Luna that have over 500,000 fans and already have considerable traffic, and some AI agents as information aggregators are even better than many human-made ones. This is not just empty slogans, but something that can be actually seen, and it is not a false demand without practical value, but something that can bring changes to the market. Although the overall functionality is still relatively low, as the future of global technology, with massive investment, the speed of technological iteration is extremely fast, and the market is often the primary application of the technology spillover from Internet giants and tech giants. Each new technology and new concept contains new opportunities.
Therefore, AI in the circle is not only full of imagination, but also can be implemented. Once there are landing projects, it often triggers a heated speculation in the market, driving the rise of many related sectors. Under the wealth effect, it forms a strong attraction, and more people participate to further drive more applications to land. Based on these unique advantages and potentials, AI may be the biggest story topic in the industry in 2025, and everything else is not on the same level.
V. AI Agent May Usher in a New Round of Explosion in Q1
In the recent crypto industry trend outlook released by multiple institutions, they have all expressed optimism about the development of and AI markets, and particularly pointed out that AI Agent-related products will see explosive growth in 2025.
The "micro-climate" of AI is dependent on the "macro-environment" of the external AI industry. Currently, the heat in the external AI field is still on the rise. On December 23, Musk's AI company xAI announced the completion of a $6 billion Series C financing, with its valuation directly soaring to $40 billion, once again demonstrating the appeal of the AI narrative and its strong capital attraction.
At the narrative level, looking back, the outbreak of the crypto AI sector is inseparable from the strong stimulus of the external tech giants' AI events. Last February, OpenAI released the large model Sora, which triggered a disruptive revolution in the AI field and greatly boosted the Worldcoin price, which surged by as much as 5 times in less than a month, with an FDV exceeding $110 billion, which in turn drove the strong growth of the entire crypto AI asset sector. Shortly after, in March, Nvidia's annual GTC conference released a heavyweight AI chip, triggering a GPU chip speculation frenzy, and the crypto market's corresponding concept projects saw soaring prices, with many new projects emerging.
Currently, OpenAI is at a critical stage of transitioning to a general artificial intelligence agent AI Agent, and plans to launch a brand new AI Agent product - "Operator" in January 2025, which is said to be able to automatically execute a series of complex operations such as writing code, travel booking, and e-commerce shopping. It is expected that this product will, like Sora in early 2024, once again ignite the enthusiasm of the AI market. In addition, Nvidia's annual AI summit will also be held in March, and it is expected that multiple heavyweight new products will be released at the conference, bringing new attention points to the crypto and AI markets and triggering a new round of related concept project speculation.
The rapid iteration of external AI technology and the continuous maturation of the crypto market have jointly driven the AI Agent to become the most promising topic in the crypto industry. Under the dual drive of narrative appeal and practical value, the AI Agent has evolved from a short-term speculative product to a core force in a diversified ecosystem, standing at the forefront of the industry, and with the increasing access of DeFi, GameFi and other tracks, it will not only unleash its potential in a wider range of scenarios, but also inject new growth momentum into the entire industry.
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