Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)
At the beginning of the new year, the two flagship projects in the AI Agent track, a16z and Swarm, have both hit new highs in market capitalization.
While this should be a cause for celebration, a16z founder Shaw has dealt a heavy blow to Swarm, publicly criticizing Swarm project developer Kye Gomez, directly accusing him of "not knowing how to write code and having a history of fraud", and targeting his "character issues". Kye had previously gained attention for being a 19-year-old high school dropout, and was praised as a "child prodigy".
This dispute has caused both major projects to drop over 20% in the short term, but they have since regained their losses, with Swarm even setting a new high of $0.6.
This event has once again placed the complex relationships, including the love-hate dynamics, between the developers behind the AI Agent projects in the spotlight. Odaily will provide a brief overview of the recent representative relationships between the AI Agent developers, and observe how the Devs' actions have impacted the prices of AI Agent and related Meme coins.
The central node of the relationship map: a16z founder Shaw
According to Coingecko data, as of the time of writing, the current price of a16z is $2.17, with a 7-day increase of 70%, and a market capitalization of $2.4 billion, ranking third in the AI Agent sector, only behind the leading AI Agent token VIRTUAL in the Base ecosystem and the veteran AI concept token FET.
Such a stellar performance has naturally brought Shaw, the developer behind it, a massive amount of attention. Shaw has been actively engaging with community members in different regions through offline roadshows, and his public statements are seen as "one of the important signals in the AI Agent field". Shaw previously spearheaded the Space online conference to provide AI Agent development education, which was seen as a "preaching of the deep integration of AI x Crypto".
Frequent proactive communication has brought Shaw a lot of supporters, but it has also become a trigger for conflicts with other project developers.
Relationship map of AI Agent Devs
Shaw VS Kye: Undisguised mutual dislike
Shaw has previously also criticized Swarm developer Kye. On December 21, 2024, he posted that "I really don't like to publicly point out other people's problems. Doing so poses a huge risk to our project, making many people feel tense, and I also don't want to discourage hardworking developers. But some people will steal others' work and try to take credit for it."
Shaw shared a post from the Reddit machine learning forum dated August 2023, which pointed out that a Github repo, belonging to Swarm developer Kye, might have traces of plagiarism. The comments also suggested that Kye had directly copied and pasted code from a certain code library, and "based on his code commit frequency and code content, Kye is most likely generating code using ChatGPT."
Reddit post and comments
And this latest criticism of Kye by Shaw is far more intense than before.
After Shaw's critical tweet was posted, the official X platform account of the Swarm AI Agent project responded: "Can you point out where the code is problematic so that we can solve and fix it?"
Shaw did not back down, directly retorting: "You are a thief and a fraud, with evidence from people at Princeton University and senior members of OpenAI like Gwern." The links and screenshots were explanations that Kye's previous code was allegedly generated by ChatGPT.
Shaw's retort and evidence
Faced with Shaw's questioning, Swarm developer Kye, in contrast to his previous confrontational attitude, chose a friendly response. "If you have any questions about Swarm, please submit feedback and we will fix the issues immediately. We are committed to providing a seamless AI Agent building experience for everyone."
On December 22 last year, when Shaw first criticized Kye, the latter's reaction was very intense. Kye believed that Shaw's selling of tokens had damaged the project, causing many investors to lose money, while he himself had continued to hold Swarm and MCS and never sold, making him the "orthodox" one who was committed to realizing the functionality and practicality of AI Agent. After Shaw blocked his account, Kye not only mocked him, but also launched "identity attacks", believing that Shaw, Eliza, and a16z were all scams.
Shaw & a16z crypto CTO: "DM friends"
As the initiator of the a16z DAO organization fund, Shaw's direct contact with a16z is not extensive, with the only a16z personnel he has directly interacted with being the a16z Crypto CTO. Previously, Shaw himself had stated that a16z and a16z have no relationship, and emphasized that buying related concept tokens was very foolish. However, his supplementary comment in the comments section that "I'm also one of the fools" further misled uninformed users into believing the two were related and purchasing a16z-related tokens.
In November last year, a16z Crypto Chief Technology Officer Eddy Lazzarin posted on X, revealing that the venture capital firm was in dialogue with the a16z DAO. Previously, a16z founder Shaw had posted on X seeking contact with a16z, and Lazzarin replied, "Check your DM". At the time, a16z was affected by this news, with a 24-hour increase of nearly 44% and a market capitalization of over $480 million.
Shaw & Baoskee: A friendly symbiotic relationship between the platform and the project
As a "VC-free investment platform", one of the flagship projects of daos.fun is the community-owned a16z fund, so the relationship between Shaw and daos.fun founder baoskee can be considered quite friendly.
Previously, baoskee had given a positive response regarding the "a16z token permissions" issue, directly standing with a16z and Shaw himself: "The a16z token is indeed mintable, and the minting rights will be controlled by the DAO token holders (with veto power protection)... We will conduct a thorough audit on this."
In a sense, the two can be considered as symbiotic, being on the same rope.
Shaw & Lucid: Co-founding Partners of a16z
Another partner of the a16z DAO, Lucid, is Shaw's "right-hand man", who participated in the creation of a16z and also initiated the creation of the Base ecosystem AI Agent BeffAI.
Previously, Shaw had posted to find developers interested in the Eliza Runescape plugin and agent development, and the contact person for the project at the time was Lucid.
Shaw & Skely: Supporters and Initiators of the ai Pool Project
Skely, the initiator of the AI Agent project ai Pool (METAV) that raised over 30,000 SOL in just a few hours, is a developer that Shaw cites as an example.
When Skely's X platform account was maliciously reported and banned, Shaw, as the founder of a16z, was the first to repost the community member's message in support, and later stated that the aiPool token had been released and Skely was still working to restore the X account, expressing his support for the former without reservation.
Shaw & KOTO 9 X: Unilateral Appreciation
KOTOX 9, who had previously issued the AI Meme coin KOTO, was suspected by some to be the target of Shaw's initial criticism (which was actually directed at the swarms developer Kye), but Shaw later responded and clarified: "It's not him, KOTO 9 X is a very good developer." His words are full of appreciation.
Shaw & Dan Romero: Promoters of the Farcaster Ecosystem
Last December, Shaw stated: "Farcaster is the future of programmatic applications. Eliza has already integrated Farcaster. And on a personal basis, he donated $420 worth of degenai tokens to each Eliza framework developer who embedded AI Agents into the Farcaster ecosystem at the time."
This naturally received strong support from Dan Romero, the co-founder of the Farcaster ecosystem, who replied in the comments with "LFG".
This suggests a certain degree of partnership between the two parties.
In addition, Shaw has also actively promoted the close collaboration between a16z, Eliza and the decentralized computing network Aethir, the decentralized AI operating system 0G, and the well-known DEX platform Orca.
Other Smolworld Developers: Shaw's Team Partners
In a tweet at the end of last year, when asked with surprise whether he was no longer involved in Smolworld-related work and was instead focusing on Eliza and a16z, Shaw responded that he was still managing the team, but the daily development work was mainly handled by lordasado, Koshi and Alextitonis.
Summary: AI Agents Have No Borders, but Developers Have Boundaries
As the old saying goes: "Science has no borders, but scientists have different nationalities." Similarly, the project accounts built on the X platform, the smart contracts deployed on the chain, and the corresponding AI Agents have no borders, but the countless AI Agent developers behind them may have different boundaries and complex relationships.
Although AI Agents in the crypto field still have a lot of room for progress compared to mainstream products, AI Agents and their developers are working in their own ways to drive the continuous development of projects, products, and tracks. As swarms developer Kye said, "Fighting is a zero-sum game where both sides lose, only by working together can we create net gains".
