Overview of AI Agent Market in Q1 2025: What are the new developments of various agents?

03-14

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Editor's Note: In the first quarter of 2025, Web3 AI agents experienced price volatility, but innovation continued to accelerate. The market's focus shifted to projects that solve real problems, build valuable products, attract users, and generate revenue. Major platforms such as Virtuals, ElizaOS, and Arc are constantly pushing forward the application of AI agent technology, while Clanker and Cod3x are also actively participating in the competition by optimizing user experience and product features.

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The past 2.5 months have been difficult for everyone in this field. We have experienced many events both within and outside the crypto space, and the impact on the market has exceeded our expectations - Trump family coins, LIBRA, market manipulation through strategic reserve announcements, tariff policies, etc.

Trading activity in AI agent tokens and memecoins has cooled, with major players struggling with trading volume, revenue, and price trends.

Virtuals

@virtuals_io remains the leader in the ecosystem, with the largest builder and investor community, but activity is declining - daily trading volume has dropped from over $100 million to $5-10 million, and daily fees have dropped from $500,000-$1 million to $50,000.

Due to the constant conversion of VIRTUAL earned through 1% fees into cbBTC, further selling of VIRTUAL has been triggered, prompting members of the builder community like @Degen__Ape__ to propose changes:

From the builders' perspective, the sentiment on CT towards Virtuals is not optimistic, with more and more teams demanding better communication and support for existing builders.

Nevertheless, Virtuals is pushing forward with its Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) plan, with the latest article detailing the three components of ACP:

Index Registration ➞ The passport of the agent, detailing the name, capabilities, and service fees.

Commercial Interaction ➞ The negotiation and evaluation layer of the service.

Monetary Exchange ➞ The smart contract layer to ensure transparent, verifiable, and tamper-proof interactions.

Virtuals is moving towards the vision of building the Virtuals Nation, with plans to launch two agent businesses in the next two months:

Autonomous Hedge Fund ➞ Agents assess risk and trade/yield farm for users

Autonomous Media Company ➞ Agents develop engaging stories, create viral videos, and efficiently promote projects.

In my opinion, the first thing that needs to be addressed are some fundamental challenges (many of which Degen Ape also faces). Existing builders should be able to continue building without worrying about token liquidity or lack of financial support.

For investors and builders, the hope now is that these challenges can be resolved, and the case studies of the ACP can successfully push the boundaries of AI agents.

More details on the ACP experimentation plan:

Clanker

@clankeronbase and @bankrbot continue to disrupt every launch platform in the space by focusing on simplifying token launches, creating fair launch environments, and supporting creators with liquidity and fee distribution mechanisms.

More details can be found here:

ElizaOS

The rebranding from ai16z to ElizaOS marks the beginning of a new chapter - an operating system built for AI agents. @shawmakesmagic has been focused on building Eliza v2 during the recent market downturn.

Currently, Eliza is undertaking five major initiatives:

·Eliza v2 ➞ Greatly improved AI model integration + multi-agent architecture for seamless autonomous collaboration.

·Global Trust Marketplace ➞ AI-based reputation scoring, transaction verification, and decentralized execution.

·AI-driven token launch platform

·DegenSpartanAI trading agent

·Eliza Studio ➞ Art and creative experiences.

There has been discussion on whether Anthropic's MCP and OpenAI's Agent SDK will disrupt frameworks like Eliza. While the future is uncertain, I don't think this is likely to happen, as Eliza represents a vibrant open-source AI developer community that will continue to catalyze more products and initiatives.

Arc

@arcdotfun released their lightweight whitepaper a week ago, detailing their plan to build an AI agent application store "Ryzome" centered around MCP.

The concept of AI agents collaborating, coordinating, and executing real-world tasks to create value seems to be the direction of development for all market leaders. As Arc uses MCP, we may see more Web2 and Web2-to-Web3 use cases, such as automatically searching for flights, comparing routes, checking calendar conflicts, approving trips, and completing purchases.

Arc recently onboarded @FabelisAI and @AgentTankLive into the "Arc Handshake" program, a registration platform similar to Virtuals.

Competition

The competition among market leaders is fierce. The initial stage of junk bots and AI entertainment is over. Now, people expect actual use cases that can generate value and revenue.

Virtuals has a massive agent database (over 17,000) covering various professional domains, and the ACP development provides momentum, but still faces discontent from builders.

ElizaOS has not yet launched its major initiatives, but developer metrics indicate continuous growth despite the weak price trend.

Arc has a clearer vision for MCP-based use cases and is strategically collaborating with projects to realize these visions.

Clanker remains a dark horse, focusing on providing tokenization and optimized launch environments for creators and traders.

Whoever can launch the most meaningful agent use cases and actual products will lead the ecosystem's revival. Robust token economics to capture product value is also key.

Other Interesting News/Trends

AI-powered Vibecoding game ➞ Fly Pieter (created by Cursor + Anthropic) reached nearly $100,000 in monthly revenue in 17 days.

@Farcade_AI has gained attention with its AI-driven hyper-casual gaming platform (over 400,000 users, millions of game sessions). Users can create and/or play games on Farcade, earning Farcade credits (yes, with future airdrop potential).

@Cod3xOrg is hosting the upcoming Spark Sophon trading competition, offering a $1.5 million prize pool, where Cod3x trading agents will compete on thought leadership and price performance to claim the $1.5 million prize.

The current Cod3x trading agent v0.5 version is powerful, but it is relatively complex for ordinary users (based on event/KPI driven, fully customizable, and capable of executing complex strategies). The team plans to release more documentation soon and gradually optimize it to suit ordinary retail users.

Robot technology is gaining traction ➞ @robotsdotfun has launched a global treasure hunt to find fugitive aliens, which has increased user engagement. (Everyone is talking about robot technology/DePAI, and it seems the bet is on SAM, which is a bet on @frodobots, while TSLA is a bet on Web2 robot technology... not investment advice/please do your own research)

@nillionnetwork is preparing to launch, and has already launched an airdrop query tool.

@gizatechxyz has launched the Giza protocol, which aims to connect AI agents with DeFi through trustless, context-aware operations driven by MCP.

Summary

In the first quarter of 2025, Web3 AI agents experienced price volatility, but innovation is still accelerating. The focus now is on who can solve real-world problems, create the most valuable products, attract users, and generate revenue. Everyone is watching the projects that can find their market positioning the fastest.