Which track has the most potential in this bull market?
If asked at the early stage of this bull market, the answer would undoubtedly be the Bitcoin ecosystem and the AI track. However, now that the industry has developed to this stage, Bitcoin has already broken the $100,000 barrier, and the inscriptions and runes of the Bitcoin ecosystem have basically cooled off, while the AI track continues to be hot, even taking over the Meme track, seemingly showing signs of rivaling DeFi Summer.
Of course, now the AI track is not the same as the projects led by WLD, TAO, etc., at the beginning of last year. The currently popular and trending area is the AI agent track derived from AI Memes.
So, what is an AI agent? What is the current state of development in the industry, and what opportunities are there for ordinary people?
01
AI agent: The market capitalization of the track has approached $20 billion in just two months.
An AI agent refers to an intelligent system that can perceive the environment and take corresponding actions. In other words, AI agents not only provide search results but can also plan, decompose, and execute tasks on their own. It can be understood that AI agents are your robotic assistants that help you handle a series of trivial matters according to your needs.
The founder of OpenAI recently stated, 'Agents will be the next major breakthrough,' and will launch their own AI agent products in January this year. The battle of AI agents in Web2 is already in full swing, and the AI agent track in Web3 has also rapidly exploded within just a few months.
Just in early October, everyone was still immersed in the rapid rise of the AI Meme leader Goat. At that time, AI agents were rarely mentioned. In less than two months, the total market capitalization of the AI agent track has reached $17.65 billion, with a recent market cap increase of over 60%. In the context of instability in the overall crypto market, the AI agent track shows a different kind of heat, and the speed of the AI agent explosion cannot be considered slow.
From the 827 AI agent projects currently recorded by cookie.fun, the market capitalization of Virtuals ecosystem projects accounts for over 38%, while the second-ranked Ai16z ecosystem accounts for 16.37%. These two ecosystems each have their own factions within the entire AI agent track, showing a significant rivalry.
Among the current AI agent projects, there are both pure Meme attribute AI agents represented by GOAT and Fartcoin, as well as application-based projects represented by Virtuals, Ai16z, ZEREBRO, etc. However, based on the current discussion heat on social media platforms and the market capitalization growth, AI agents with certain functionalities and infrastructure are clearly more popular than purely AI Memes.
02
Key AI agent roundup
1) Virtuals Ecosystem
As the AI agent track has developed to the present, the Virtuals ecosystem has firmly established itself as the leader. Currently, the entire Virtuals ecosystem accounts for over 38% of the AI agent track's market capitalization, and the market capitalization of Virtuals Protocol has reached $4.88 billion, ranking 36th among all crypto assets.
Virtuals Protocol is an AI agent issuance platform that helps users easily build and issue AI agents. Currently, the count of AI agents that can be statistically tracked on the Virtuals ecosystem official website has exceeded 500. For AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem, whether creating new AI agents, selling tokens, or earning service income, all are deeply bound to Virtuals. Therefore, with the continuous development of AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem, the overall value of the ecosystem will feedback into Virtuals, similar to how ETH and SOL capture value for the entire public chain ecosystem. The economic model of the Virtuals Protocol does indeed lead all other competing platforms.
Currently, the market capitalization and number of AI agents in the entire ecosystem are growing rapidly. Some leading AI agents are as follows:
Aixbt
Currently, Aixbt ranks first in popularity among AI agents on X. According to cookie.fun statistics, Aixbt accounts for over 17% of the discussion topics among all AI agents, and as an AI agent that aggregates all crypto hotspot information, Aixbt can be said to be a 'quite significant' KOL on X. Its total market capitalization is currently $598 million, making it 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 official Virtuals team. All AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem adopt the G.A.M.E modular framework, which can be understood as G.A.M.E being the brain of all AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem.
When AI agents in the Virtuals ecosystem operate, they need to repeatedly call G.A.M.E. Currently, this calling is still in the free phase. Once it starts charging, the income from the G.A.M.E treasury will be quite considerable.
G.A.M.E currently has a total market capitalization of $354 million, 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, establishing connections with fans through live broadcasts or text outputs across various social platforms, and can also incentivize user participation in activities through on-chain transfers. Currently, Luna's total market capitalization is $156 million.
VaderAI
VaderAI claims to be the first autonomous trading AI agent token. By staking and locking to gain whitelist access or participate in investments and other rights, VaderAI has rapidly risen since its launch and currently has a market capitalization of $120 million.
Ai16z Ecosystem
Currently, the entire AI agent track, aside from the Virtuals ecosystem, Ai16z is undoubtedly the largest IP. However, unlike the Virtuals ecosystem, which started with a very complete AI agent issuance mechanism and economic incentive mechanism, Ai16z started from AI Meme and later considered building the Token incentive mechanism into the Ai16z framework, which started much later.
However, the recent momentum of the Ai16z ecosystem is also very strong, with the entire ecosystem's market capitalization already accounting for over 40% of Virtuals' market capitalization, and the leading Ai16z's market capitalization has also surpassed $2 billion.
So, how did Ai16z build an ecological platform from an AI Meme?
This brings us to Eliza, which is an AI agent framework developed by the Ai16z team, supporting the development and deployment of AI agents. For example, a self-governing investment DAO like Ai16z is based on the Eliza framework. Similar to the G.A.M.E framework in the aforementioned Virtuals ecosystem.
Currently, the value capture of Ai16z, in addition to the narrative of the Ai16z self-investment DAO, also includes the ecosystem platform based on the Eliza framework. All AI agent Tokens that adopt the Eliza framework will allocate 5-10% to the Ai16z DAO.
As an open-source framework, Eliza currently ranks first on GitHub's December trend list, and more and more developers are accelerating their adoption, which is one of the reasons for the increasing popularity of the Ai16z ecosystem.
However, currently, the Ai16z ecosystem has just emerged, and the market capitalization of projects is generally still low. Moreover, the AI agent Eliza, which shares the same name as the open-source framework Eliza, has quite good popularity. Although Ai16z founder Shaw stated that the team only supports this AI agent and is from a different project team than Eliza, recently, Shaw and other key figures from the Ai16z team have publicly announced their roles as advisors for Eliza, which has led to Eliza's market capitalization soaring alongside the explosion 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, with a strong technical team behind it. Compared to other AI agent frameworks, Rig uses the Rust language, which has high performance, memory safety, and other features, thus receiving a lot of attention from developers after its launch. Its popularity on GitHub is only second to Eliza.
However, the development threshold for the Rust language is a bit high, which also brings certain limitations. Currently, the market capitalization of ARC is $394 million, and it is also very popular on X.
ZerePy (ZEREBRO)
ZerePy is also an AI agent framework launched by the Zerebro team, based on the Python language, making it quite friendly for both beginners and professional developers.
Zerebro itself is a rather leading AI agent that can not only create music, NFTs, etc., but also issue Tokens, and even has a record company. By launching ZerePy, Zerebro has transformed into an AI agent platform, further opening up the imaginative space of Zerebro. Its market capitalization has now reached $725 million, ranking fifth on cookie.fun's X popularity chart.
Griffain
Griffain is an AI agent platform based on Solana, and the AI agents it launches are not limited to interactions on various social platforms but also support the automation of various DeFi transactions. Additionally, the endorsement and support from Solana Labs and the founders of Solana have kept Griffain's popularity high since its launch. Currently, Griffain has a market capitalization of $445 million and performs quite well on social media platforms.
Vvaifu
Like Virtuals, Vvaifu is also an AI agent launch platform that allows users to issue AI agents without complex programming skills, making it friendly for beginners.
Vvaifu also has a good economic model, with the protocol adopting a deflationary mechanism: AI agents created on the Vvaifu platform will destroy a certain amount of Vvaifu, ensuring that as the ecosystem develops, the total supply of Vvaifu will decrease year by year, increasing its scarcity. Currently, the total market capitalization of Vvaifu is $136 million, but as an AI agent launch platform with a first-mover advantage in the Solana ecosystem, its performance is not particularly outstanding at this time.
4) Pure AI meme
During the last meme craze, AI Memes led by GOAT and ACT exploded first, igniting the AI track, especially after ACT launched on leading platforms, with its market cap skyrocketing from over $20 million to over $600 million, bringing more investment effects to AI Memes.
However, in just two months, the current market trend has shifted from pure AI memes to application-based AI agents. Although there were rapid market cap increases for AI Memes like Fartcoin and Turbo, even exceeding $1 billion, overall, the popularity of pure AI Memes has significantly declined.
Given the current hot trend of the AI agent track and the competition among Web2 AI giants to seize the AI agent opportunity, it seems that the fire of the AI agent track will continue for a long time.
