Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
In the past month, AI Agent has set off a new wave of enthusiasm in the crypto industry.
In less than a month, the market value of the entire AI Agent track project has reached tens of billions of US dollars. Among them, Virtuals' market value has reached 3 billion US dollars, and ai16z, Fartcoin and other market values have reached 1 billion US dollars. According to incomplete statistics from Foresight News, there are at least 14 AI Agent-related cryptocurrencies with a value of more than 100 million US dollars.
Many Web3 practitioners said: AI Agent may be one of the biggest narratives in this cycle, just like DeFi, NFT and Metaverse that appeared in the last two cycles. So, when a new crypto narrative is born in its early stages, how can we find the leading crypto project of AI Agent through a good set of methodologies? The author tries to list ten methods for readers.
One: On-chain income method
This method is more suitable for judging platform-type AI Agents, such as Clanker, vvaifu.fun, Virtuals, etc. If there are changes in the daily on-chain income and the number of on-chain transactions, such as rapid growth for several consecutive days, it may mean that this AI Agent may have good development. On the contrary, it may mean that the development has stagnated.
Image source: Dune
For example, Clanker, as a star AI Agent project in the Base ecosystem, can be seen from the on-chain data that after November 26, the number of tokens issued, traders, and on-chain revenue began to decline, and this trend was immediately reflected in the token price.
Second: Developer Attention Method
More stars on Github may mean that more developers are paying attention to and recognizing this framework. This method is more suitable for judging framework-type AI Agents, such as Eliza.
Search Github to see the developer attention of framework-type AI Agents, that is, how many stars they have. For example, ai16z/Eliza gained 5,300 stars in less than a month. This is a very surprising data.
Data source: GitHub
As shown in the figure above, it can be seen that the developer attention of ai16z/Eliza has exceeded uniswap in just one month. It can be seen that developers are interested in this framework. Another set of data can also be compared: Sui currently has 6,400 stars, Solana has 13,000 stars, Ethereum has 50,000 stars, and Base has 70,000 stars.
However, it should be noted that the stars on Github can also be brushed, although such behavior is not common. So this indicator can be used as an auxiliary reference for decision-making.
Three: KOL fans number method
A relatively certain track for AI Agent is: KOL.
Currently famous AI Agent-style KOLs include: Terminal of Truths (210,000 fans), aixbt (160,000 fans), Zerebro (60,000 fans), Eliza (14,000 fans), LUNA (30,000 fans on Twitter, 500,000 fans on TIKTOK), etc.
A major difference in this round of AI revolution is the change in semantics. The author expects that there will be a KOL leader in AI Agent, and the market value of the token of this leader is expected to exceed US$5 billion. The change in the number of fans may become one of the important measurement indicators.
Four: The influence of leaders
There are more and more leaders in the AI industry entering the Crypto market. Currently, there are Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z (representative project supported: ai16z), Sam Altman (representative project supported: Worldcoin), etc. They have all brought multiple cryptocurrencies worth more than one billion US dollars to the currency circle. It is expected that there will be more in the future, such as Musk and Grok, which he founded.
There are also companies with lower certainty, such as Apple, Meta, tiktok, such as Claude, Copilot, Gemini, these AI manufacturers may bring something different to Crypto.
It is especially necessary to pay attention to those technology giants who are researching AI and Crypto at the same time, such as Musk, Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman and Huang Renxun. Their leadership in the technology industry can often be transmitted to the crypto industry.
Five: Breaking the circle in the outside world
If AI Agent is really one of the biggest narratives in this cycle, we need to pay extra attention to the influence of AI Agent on the outside world. For example, Web2 developers are attracted by Web3's AI Agent framework and products. As far as I know, Eliza has attracted the attention of some AI practitioners outside the circle.
KOL products, such as Terminal of Truths and LUNA, have also attracted the attention of people outside the circle. They already have more than 200,000 fans, and their influence is still expanding. We need to understand and judge whether such a trend will further break through the circle and affect the wider outside world.
Six: The "currency listing effect" method of the top exchanges
Those who participated in Sandbox in the early stage may know that some metaverse concepts took off after Binance listed coins. The reason why the top exchanges are called top exchanges is that they need to ensure that the coins they list can lead the market. If they are led by other exchanges, they will gradually lose their status as top exchanges.
Pay more attention to the coin listing information and Launchpad information of the five exchanges, Binance, Upbit, Coinbase, Bitget, and Hype. They are in fierce competition for the "coin listing effect" this cycle.
Especially Coinbase and Hype, Americans are indeed ahead of other regions in the field of pan-AI Agent, and they may have a faster information advantage.
Seven: Public Chain Method
Some public chains are naturally suitable for the birth of AI Agent projects, and naturally lower the threshold for the birth of AI Agent. Finding a few good public chains and finding good AI Agent projects in these public chains can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
For example, Base has 70,000 developer stars, which exceeds Ethereum, and far exceeds Solana and Sui. It can be said to be a leader in latecomer advantage.
Coinbase itself also attaches great importance to AI Agent and has laid out very early. This will grab a great first-mover advantage in future competition.
The advantage of Solana is that the meme platform is well done, and AI Agent relies heavily on memes to rise, which is a very big advantage of Solana.
Eight: AI Agent Community Method
Everyone has his own blind spots, but the power of the team is all-round and has no dead ends.
It is very important to establish your own AI Agent exchange group and community, or find one or two such high-quality communities. The opportunities of AI Agent are often born in corners that no one pays attention to, and at this time, the power of the community is needed.
Nine: Track Segmentation Method
AI Agent is also divided into various tracks, such as KOL track, beauty anchor track, investment research blogger track, meme platform track, VC track, platform track, framework track...
There are many tracks within AI Agent, and not all tracks can be unfalsified. You need to find a track that really has a chance to survive to the end.
Ten: Origin Law
At the beginning, who started it? Which AI Agent opened the narrative of the entire track? It may be the leader of this track.
In the NFT track, CryptoPunks has always been in a transcendent position, Ape has created a new narrative for the entire track, and Fat Penguin is one of the best NFTs combined with Web2; in the Metaverse track, Sandbox and Decentraland have been listed on the top exchanges very early and occupied the leading position in the Metaverse; Uniswap first implemented the concept of automated market makers in decentralized exchanges (DEX) and became a pioneer in the market... Projects that achieve systematic innovation often get the largest part of the track dividend.
It will be like BTC, making you always feel that it is expensive, but looking back, you will find that it was really cheap at that time.