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

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

If we ask a question at the beginning of this 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 died out, but the AI ​​track continues to be hot, even taking 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 led by WLD, TAO, etc. at the beginning of last year. The currently popular and increasingly popular track is the AI ​​agent track derived from AI Meme.

So, what is AI agent? What is its current development status in the entire industry, and what opportunities does it offer 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 plans, decomposes and executes tasks by itself. It can be understood that AI agent is your robot assistant that 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 already 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 agents were 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, and 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 sign of heat. The speed of AI agent's explosion is not slow.

Data source: cookie.fun, January 2, 2025

Judging 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 a faction in the entire AI agent track and are likely to compete with each other.

Among the current AI agent projects, there are both pure Meme-based AI agents such as GOAT and Fartcoin, as well as application-based projects that support the development and deployment of AI agents such as 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 clearly more popular than pure AI Memes.

02 Inventory of key AI agents

1) Virtuals Ecosystem

As the AI ​​agent track has developed to this point, 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 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.

At present, 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, Aixbt currently accounts for more than 17% of the X topics among all AI agents. As an AI agent that aggregates all hot crypto information, Aixbt can be said to be a "very important" KOL on X by virtue of its popularity and influence. Aixbt's total market value is currently $598 million, second only to Virtuals in the entire ecosystem.

• GAME

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

When the AI ​​agent in the Virtuals ecosystem is running, it needs to call GAME repeatedly. Currently, the call is still free, but once it starts charging, the income in the GAME treasury will be considerable.

GAME’s current total market value is US$354 million, second only to Aixbt in the Virtuals ecosystem.

• Luna

Luna is the AI ​​agent with the second highest popularity 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 US$156 million.

• VaderAI

VaderAI claims to be the first AI agent that can autonomously trade AI agent tokens. By staking and locking positions, it can obtain whitelist access rights or participate 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

In the entire AI agent track, besides the Virtuals ecosystem, Ai16z is undoubtedly the biggest IP. However, unlike the Virtuals ecosystem, which had a very complete AI agents 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 been gaining momentum recently. The market value of the entire ecosystem has accounted for more than 40% of Virtuals’ market value, and the market value of the leader Ai16z has exceeded US$2 billion.

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

This brings us to Eliza, an AI agent framework developed by the Ai16z team that supports the development and deployment of AI agents. For example, autonomous investment DAOs like Ai16z are developed based on the Eliza framework, which is similar to the GAME framework in the Virtuals ecosystem mentioned above.

At present, in addition to the narrative of Ai16z, an autonomous investment DAO, Ai16z's value capture also includes an ecological 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 its 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, Shaw and other important figures in the Ai16z team have recently 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-oriented 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 Rust language is a bit high, which will also bring certain limitations. At present, ARC's market value is 394 million US dollars, and it is also very popular on X.

• 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 and NFTs, 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. Its current market value has reached $725 million, ranking fifth on cookie.fun's X-hotness ranking.

• Griffain

Griffain is an AI agent platform based on Solana . The AI ​​agent it launched is not limited to interactions on various social platforms, but also supports the automation of various DeFi transactions. In addition, the endorsement and support from Solana Labs and Solana founders have also made Griffain popular since its launch. At present, Griffain has a market value of US$445 million and is also very popular on social media platforms.

• Vvaifu

Like Virtuals, Vvaifu is also an AI agent launch platform that allows users to launch AI agents without complex programming skills, making it more friendly to novices.

Vvaifu also has a good economic model. The protocol adopts a deflation mechanism: AI agents created on the Vvaifu platform will destroy a certain amount of Vvaifu, ensuring 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 $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 wave of meme craze, AI Meme, led by GOAT and ACT, was the first to explode and ignite the AI ​​track, especially ACT, which was launched on the leading platform. Its market value increased from more than 20 million to more than 600 million US dollars, bringing more investment effects to AI Meme.

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 meme such as Fartcoin and Turbo has risen rapidly during this period, even exceeding US$1 billion, overall, the popularity of pure AI meme is no longer 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. The AI ​​agent track has just started. The projects mentioned above are just some projects with first-mover advantage and large market capitalization. The current status of the entire track is that new concepts and new projects emerge in an endless stream, and the entire track structure is far from being finalized.

Judging from the current hot trend of the AI ​​agent track and the AI ​​agent trend that Web2 AI giants are all vying for, the AI ​​agent track will continue to be hot for a long time to come.