Editor's Note: This article explores the future development of the agent economy, especially the evolution of AI agents. From stage 1 of simple chatbots, to stage 2 of the integration of privacy and DeFi, and then to stage 3 of collaboration between agents, it emphasizes the critical role of infrastructure, frameworks, and technology. Although the current market is flooded with simple social media agents, the real opportunity lies in the technologies and platforms that support autonomous economic activities.
The following is the original content (edited for easier reading):
"BlockBeats agents are not just here to steal your Twitter dynamics - they are reshaping the entire digital economy."
In this article, we will delve into how to discover the next AIagentAlpha by fully understanding the methodology behind it. Remember, once everyone sees it, it's no longer Alpha. The key is to stay two steps ahead by applying this methodology to succeed.
Golden Rule: Consensus
I will dump your coins, and you will dump others. We are all here to make money, so you should never truly "marry" your investment bag. Your task is to find the right time to dump it. To dump these shitcoins to others, you need to find a project with "consensus." This means you are likely to find your exit liquidity.
How to make money?
Predict a new trend (consensus) with firm conviction.
Invest in potential projects, ensuring they have sufficient legitimacy and innovation.
When the consensus forms, sell your bags to others.
The next article will focus on the most difficult part: prediction.
If you have nothing in your head, or no personal belief in the trend, then you cannot invest in potential projects on your own. You either rely entirely on luck or wait for others to call you, waiting for KOLs to dump you again. Let's get started.
I. Three Waves of Agent Evolution
Although 2024 is defined by AI breakthroughs such as OpenAI's o1 and multi-billion dollar valuations, 2025 will be the year of the financialization of artificial intelligence. But in this rapidly evolving environment, the key to discovering real value is to go beyond the "AIagent" hype and understand the fundamental changes that are taking place.
Understanding our position in the adoption cycle is crucial for finding opportunities. The agent economy is unfolding in three different stages:
Wave 1: Human to BlockBeats (Current)
We are currently in this stage - imagine the simple chatbot interactions you see on X (aixbt agent), where these agents primarily act as research assistants and executors of human intent. While valuable, they do not require revolutionary infrastructure changes. Currently, most agents look like customized ChatGPTs, helping you with simple research. These agents do not have a high degree of autonomy. They cannot independently manage resources, take on risk, or pay for other services.
Wave 2: BlockBeats to Human (Emerging)
This is where it gets interesting, as AIagents begin to independently handle daily tasks - such as executing trading strategies, optimizing home energy use, or negotiating and paying bills - without your constant intervention. While tools like Stripe's Agent SDK can cover some scenarios, they also herald a larger shift: you will no longer pay fixed monthly or annual fees, but see more granular pay-as-you-go billing.
As agents take on more responsibilities, they need to cover computing power, API fees per query, model inference costs, and more - anytime, anywhere. These small-scale on-demand transactions quickly expose the limitations of existing payment systems, as they were not designed to support real-time micropayments. This is where cryptocurrencies can play a role, providing faster settlement, lower fees, and more flexible ways to better address these new demands.
Some on-chain examples may include:
Automated trading systems
Yield optimization
Asset portfolio rebalancing
Wave 3: BlockBeats to BlockBeats/Collaboration (Future)
This is where the biggest opportunity lies. We've already seen some early experiments, with projects like Terminal of Truth and Zerebro exploring BlockBeats-to-BlockBeats business models, but the real potential goes far beyond social media tokens:
Resource markets: Computing BlockBeats negotiating with storage BlockBeats to achieve optimal data placement
Service optimization: Database BlockBeats negotiating with computing BlockBeats for query optimization services
Financial services: Risk assessment BlockBeats transacting with insurance BlockBeats for coverage
This stage requires infrastructure designed specifically for machine-to-machine interactions, as traditional monetary systems, focused on human verification and control, are ill-equipped to handle an economy dominated by autonomous entities. Instead, stablecoins provide a critical framework, with their programmability, cross-border capabilities, fast transaction settlement, and facilitation of micropayments, making them better suited to address these new demands than traditional systems.
II. Analyzing the Web3 AI Stack
Delphi Digital has already provided a fairly clear "decentralized AI" stack categorization, with 6 key focus areas (which I believe have high potential), each with some "sub-industries." You can call them narratives or innovation directions. I can guarantee that each sub-industry will have a leader that will reach at least a $500 million market cap in the coming months.
6 key focus areas and notable examples:
Applications aixbt agent
Agent Enablers/Coordination virtuals
Privacy PhalaNetwork
AI Training/Inference ritualnet
Compute ionet
Data Arweave
There are many sub-industries under each focus area, so I won't cover everything here. However, I expect there to be an "order of capital inflow." This order will heavily depend on the market's maturity and stage of development, and I've created a visual for it:
Stage 1:
We see a flood of BlockBeats agents being released, with most of them being just ChatGPT wrappers with very limited real-world utility, but they are interesting memes. As we know, the usefulness of a product has nothing to do with its valuation, so many imaginative and interesting BlockBeats agents will be hyped.
Agent Enablers (launch platforms) become the first-level infrastructure for BlockBeats agents in this stage. For example, as BlockBeats agents generate revenue through audience interaction, these funds will be used to buy back and burn the tokens paired with $Virtual in the liquidity pool. This creates a direct link between the success of the BlockBeats agents and the platform's value, aligning the incentive mechanisms within the ecosystem.
Stage 2:
If a narrative is left with just chatbots spamming on Twitter, it will no longer be appealing. Therefore, we start to see people integrating the concept of "privacy" (e.g., aipool tee and sporedotfun).
The good news is that most people don't understand technical terms like TEE, FHE, and ZKP. This immediately makes BlockBeats applications appear very innovative, even if these BlockBeats may not have actually implemented TEE. However, all of this is to enhance the value of BlockBeats applications and give them more "utility." BlockBeats will soon venture into the DeFi/wallet space.
We will see BlockBeats capable of token swaps, cross-chain bridging, optimizing transaction routes, and minimizing your transaction fees, and these BlockBeats will be integrated into wallet interfaces.
The key is that these agents now need to compete on "technology" rather than "culture", which is different from stage 1. As a result, you will see tokens like $BUZZ or $ACOLYT being hyped, as they have a legitimate AI team or developer backing them (although they may still be far behind Web2 AI experts).
You will soon see: the "AI agent wealth effect" will attract a large number of top Web2 AI developers to enter the Web3 space to make money, bringing many powerful AI projects. If I were you, I might check LinkedIn more often than Dexscreener.
Stage 3:
These agents will eventually mature and extract core value from AI reasoning, data, and distributed computing.
We will have TEE-based infrastructure for secure key management, dedicated data availability (DA) layers to store and retrieve the context of large language models (LLMs), on-chain Oracles to provide trusted data streams, zkVM frameworks for verifiable execution, and chain abstraction solutions.
This also means we will access large-scale, trustless computing resources while ensuring interactions, data flows, and outputs remain verifiable and secure. At this point, advanced infrastructure like ritualnet, ionet, and StoryProtocol will transition from pure speculation to true necessities driving the next generation of AI innovation.
Part Three: What should I invest in now?
Let's go back to the overview we saw earlier:
I think we are now transitioning from stage 1 to stage 2, and I would be more interested in if the agents can "proactively" provide real value for us, rather than just posting tweets or analyzing token price charts (which I can do with GPT). According to the definition of "proactive", I assume the agents can manage resources and make decisions autonomously. They can independently complete transaction settlements.
Some more complex applications I'm personally willing to invest in include:
Automated trading systems
Asset portfolio rebalancing
Virtual reality
AI-based smart contracts (prediction market arbitration)
The above directions may still be too broad for most people, including myself. Based on our golden rule of "consensus", I observe that most of the consensus is concentrated in the following directions:
1. shawmakesmagic
He is the ultimate AI cult leader in this AI super cycle, just like MustStopMurad in the memecoin super cycle. Don't ignore any projects that ai16z and shaw/core ai16z members are focused on and promoting. The projects he focuses on and promotes are buying opportunities.
Note: "ai16z partners", they are not always core members, and I can also call myself a partner.
2. Solana Hackathon Winners
This chain is driving some projects that can help you filter out promising projects. You need to stay ahead of the market and choose some high-quality projects. I've done this work for you, and you can check my posts. I'm not an insider, so I can only judge these projects based on personal experience. You should also do some research yourself.
However, to actually profit from this narrative, you need tools to help you, otherwise you won't be able to enter the market at the best time.
For example: AgentiPy was initially on my high-quality project list with a token. Once it launched the token, it skyrocketed to 40M, and I personally didn't manage to get in on time. You need a tool to monitor the project's Twitter, and enter when you detect the CA (contract address) being posted. More tutorials to come.
3. AI Frameworks
Do you know why there are now over 500 framework layers, and all decentralized applications (dapps) have transformed into application chains (appchains)? It's simply because of "higher valuations". Infrastructure essentially provides you with more valuation space. However, not all frameworks are the same.
You either need to get into the market leaders, or research the technology and GitHub to find a "good technical infrastructure". If you can't handle these, the best choice is still to find a good entry point in $ai16z or $virtual. Don't put your SOL/ETH into random AI scam projects.
4. DeFi x AI
As mentioned above, I'm bullish on the upcoming DEFAI (DeFi and AI) narrative. This fits my hypothesis about stage 2 (agents to humans). A good starting point is to learn through the following DeFi x AI projects and their sub-sectors:
Ultimately, understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying the real opportunities in the agent economy.
Although the current market seems to be dominated by simple social media agents, the real value lies in the infrastructure and frameworks that will drive the next generation of autonomous economic activity, and I will continue to hold my $ai16z and $Virtual tokens.
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