Has the bull market changed direction again? What are the highlights of the AI ​​agent sector that is taking off?

Source: Vernacular Blockchain

Which track has the most potential in this round of bull market?

If you ask the question at the beginning of this round of bull market, the answer is undoubtedly the Bitcoin ecosystem and the AI ​​track. However, as the industry has developed to this point, Bitcoin has already broken through the $100,000 mark, and the inscriptions and runes of the Bitcoin ecosystem have basically been extinguished, but the AI ​​track continues to be popular, and even took over the Meme track, showing signs of being on par with DeFi Summer.

Of course, the current AI track is no longer the same type of project as the AI ​​track headed by WLD, TAO, etc. at the beginning of last year. The AI ​​agent track derived from AI Meme is currently popular and has a trend of continuing to be popular.

So, what is AI agent? What is the current development status of the entire industry, and what opportunities are there for ordinary people?

01 AI agent: The market value of the track is close to 20 billion in two months

AI agent refers to an intelligent system that can perceive the environment and take corresponding actions. In other words, AI agent not only provides search results, but also can plan, decompose and execute tasks by itself. It can be understood that AI agent is your robot assistant, which can help you handle a series of trivial matters according to your needs.

The founder of OpenAI recently said that "Agent will be the next major breakthrough" and will launch its own AI agent product in January this year. The battle of AI agents in Web2 is in full swing, and the AI ​​agent track in Web3 has also exploded rapidly in just a few months.

Just in early October, everyone was still immersed in the rapid rise of AI Meme leader Goat, and AI agent was rarely mentioned at that time. In less than two months, the total market value of the AI ​​agent track has reached 17.65 billion US dollars. The market value has increased by more than 60% in the past seven days. Under the unstable state of the entire crypto market, the AI ​​agent track is another hot sign. The speed of AI agent's explosion is not slow.

Data source: cookie.fun, January 2, 2025

From the 827 AI agent projects currently included in cookie.fun, the market value of Virtuals ecosystem projects accounts for more than 38%, and the second-ranked Ai16z ecosystem accounts for 16.37%. These two ecosystems are each in their own way in the entire AI agent track, and they are likely to compete with each other.

Among the current AI  agents projects, there are pure Meme-attribute AI agents represented by GOAT and Fartcoin, as well as application-oriented projects that support the development and deployment of AI agents represented by Virtuals, Ai16z, and ZEREBRO.However, judging from the current discussion heat and market value growth on social media platforms, AI agents with certain functionality and infrastructure are obviously more popular than pure AI  Memes.

02 Inventory of key AI agents

1) Virtuals Ecosystem

Since the development of the AI ​​agent track, the Virtuals ecosystem has firmly established itself as the leader. Currently, the market value of the entire Virtuals ecosystem accounts for more than 38% of the AI ​​agent track, and the market value of Virtuals Protocol has also reached 4.88 billion, ranking 36th among all crypto assets.

Virtuals Protocol is an AI agent distribution platform that helps users easily build and distribute AI agents. Currently, there are more than 500 AI agents that can be counted on the official website of the Virtuals ecosystem. For AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem, whether it is creating new AI agents, selling tokens, or obtaining service income, they are deeply bound to Virtuals. Therefore, with the continuous development of Virtuals ecosystem AI agents, the value of the entire ecosystem will be fed back to Virtuals, similar to the value capture of ETH and SOl for the entire public chain ecosystem. The economic model of the Virtuals Protocol is indeed ahead of all other competing platforms.

Currently, the market value and number of AI agents in the entire ecosystem are growing rapidly. Several leading AI agents are as follows:

• Aixbt
  Aixbt is currently the most popular AI agent on X. According to cookie.fun statistics, Aixbt currently accounts for more than 17% of the topic of X among all AI agents. As an AI agent that aggregates all encrypted hot information, Aixbt can be said to be a "quite important" KOL on X with its popularity and influence. Aixbt's total market value is currently US$598 million, second only to Virtuals in the entire ecosystem.

• G.A.M.E

G.A.M.E is the AI ​​agent framework in the Virtuals ecosystem, developed by the Virtuals official team. All AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem use the G.A.M.E modular framework. It can be understood that G.A.M.E is the brain of all AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem.

When the AI ​​agents in the Virtuals ecosystem are running, they need to call G.A.M.E repeatedly. Currently, the call is still free. Once the charge starts, the income in the G.A.M.E treasury will be considerable.

G.A.M.E. currently has a total market value of 354 million US dollars, second only to Aixbt in the Virtuals ecosystem.

• Luna

Luna is currently the second most well-known AI agent in the Virtuals ecosystem after Aixbt, but it became famous much earlier than Aixbt.
Luna is an AI idol launched by the Virtuals ecosystem. It connects with fans on various social platforms through live broadcasts or text output, and can also motivate users to participate in activities through on-chain transfers. The current total market value of Luna is 156 million US dollars.

• VaderAI

VaderAI claims to be the first AI agent that can trade AI agent tokens autonomously. Through staking and locking positions, it obtains whitelist access rights or participates in investment and other rights. VaderAI has risen rapidly since its launch, and its current market value is 120 million US dollars.

2) Ai16z Ecosystem

At present, in the entire AI agent track, Ai16z is undoubtedly the largest IP except for the Virtuals ecosystem. However, unlike Virtuals, which had a very complete AI agent issuance mechanism and economic incentive mechanism from the beginning, Ai16z started with AI Meme and then considered building the Token incentive mechanism into the Ai16z architecture system, so it started much later.

However, the Ai16z ecosystem has also been very strong recently. The market value of the entire ecosystem has accounted for more than 40% of the market value of Virtuals, and the market value of the leading Ai16z has exceeded 2 billion US dollars.

So, how did Ai16z build an ecological platform from an AI Meme?

This has to mention Eliza. Eliza is an AI agent framework developed by the Ai16z team that supports the development and deployment of AI agents. For example, self-investment DAOs like Ai16z are developed based on the Eliza framework. Similar to the G.A.M.E framework in the Virtuals ecosystem mentioned above.

Currently, in addition to the narrative of Ai16z, the self-investment DAO, Ai16z's value capture also includes an ecosystem platform based on the Eliza framework. All AI agent tokens using the Eliza framework will be allocated 5-10% to Ai16z DAO.

As an open source framework, Eliza currently ranks first in Github's December trend list, and more and more developers are accelerating their adoption, which is one of the reasons why the Ai16z ecosystem is becoming increasingly popular.

However, the Ai16z ecosystem has just emerged, and the market value of projects is generally not high. In addition, the AI ​​agent Eliza, which has the same name as the open source framework Eliza, is quite popular. Although Ai16z founder Shaw said that the team only supports Eliza as an AI agent and is a different project team from Eliza, recently, Shaw and other important roles in the Ai16z team have announced that they will serve as consultants for Eliza, which has also made Eliza's market value take off with the outbreak of the Ai16z ecosystem.

3) Other application-based AI agents

• Rig (ARC)

Rig is also an AI agent framework, developed based on the Rust language, and the technical strength of the team behind it is quite strong. Compared with other AI agent frameworks, the Rust language used by Rig has high performance and memory safety. Therefore, it has been sought after by a number of developers since its launch, and its popularity on Github is second only to Eliza. However, the development threshold of the Rust language is a bit high, which will also bring certain limitations. ARC's current market value is 394 million US dollars, and its popularity on X is also very high. ZerePy (ZEREBRO) ZerePy is also an AI agent framework launched by the Zerebro team. It is based on the Python language and is therefore very friendly to both beginners and professional developers.

Zerebro itself is a leading AI agent that can not only create music, NFTs, etc., but also issue tokens and even own a record company.By launching ZerePy, Zerebro has transformed into an AI agent platform, further opening up Zerebro's imagination. At present, its market value has reached 725 million US dollars, ranking fifth on cookie.fun's X-hot list.

• Griffain

Griffain is an AI agent platform based on Solana. The AI ​​agent it launched is not limited to the interaction of various social platforms, but also supports the automation of various DeFi transactions. In addition, the endorsement and support from Solana Labs and Solana's founders have also kept Griffain's popularity high since its launch.Currently, Griffain has a market value of 445 million US dollars and is also quite popular on social media platforms.

• Vvaifu

Like Virtuals, Vvaifu is also an AI agent launch platform. Users do not need complex programming skills to issue AI agents, which is friendly to novices.

Vvaifu also has a good economic model, and the protocol adopts a deflation mechanism: AI agents created on the Vvaifu platform will destroy a certain number of Vvaifu to ensure that the total amount of Vvaifu will decrease year by year as the ecosystem develops, increasing scarcity. The current total market value of Vvaifu is US$136 million, but as an AI agent launch platform with a first-mover advantage in the Solana ecosystem, its performance is not too impressive at present.

4) Pure AI meme

In the last meme craze, AI memes led by GOAT and ACT took the lead in breaking out, bringing the AI ​​track to the fore. In particular, ACT was launched on the leading platform, and its market value increased from more than 20 million to more than 600 million US dollars, bringing more investment effects to AI memes.

However, in just two months, the current market trend has shifted from pure AI meme to applied AI agent. Although the market value of AI memes such as Fartcoin and Turbo has risen rapidly during this period, even exceeding a billion US dollars, overall, the popularity of pure AI meme is not as high as before.

03 Summary

Although the AI ​​agent track is in full swing, it has only been less than two months since the trend shifted from AI meme to applied AI agent, and the AI ​​agent track has just started. The projects mentioned above are just some projects with first-mover advantage and large market value. The current status of the entire track is that new concepts and new projects emerge in an endless stream, and the entire track pattern is far from being finalized.

From the current hot trend of the AI ​​agent track and the AI ​​agent trend that Web2 AI giants are scrambling to seize, the AI ​​agent track should continue to be hot for a long time in the future.