The AI Agent track is booming: A list of currently popular AI Agent-related projects.

Jessy, Golden Finance

The combination of AI Agents and blockchain, along with the wealth effect brought by various AI Agent memes, has undoubtedly become a main narrative of this bull market. The year 2024 can also be said to be a year of explosive growth for the AI Agent sector.

At the beginning of 2025, according to CoinGecko data, the overall token market capitalization of AI Agent has exceeded $16 billion. The overall market value of this track has ushered in a big climb in 2024, and the majority of the tracks are the tokens related to the Virturls ecosystem, the AI Agent launch platform on the Base chain, and the tokens related to the AI16Z Dao, a centralized trading fund, according to the latest data from Cookie.fun, these two ecosystems account for more than 50% of the ecosystem.

Currently, various AI Agent projects are vying for attention. Although there are relatively few projects that can be truly implemented, the continuous emergence of innovations is also propelling this sector forward.

The development of AI Agents has gone through a process from the initial Meme tokens, to asset issuance platforms, and then to specific on-chain applications of AI Agents.

2024 AI Agent Development Milestones

1 3 Month: The Truth Terminal chatbot was successfully developed and released on X, gaining attention for its humorous responses. This chatbot integrates a cryptocurrency wallet.

July 2: Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen donated $50,000 worth of Bitcoin to Truth Terminal, attracting significant attention.

3 8** month:** Coinbase announced the completion of the first cryptocurrency transaction between artificial intelligence robots. In this transaction, one AI robot purchased AI Tokens from another AI robot using cryptocurrency.

October 4: The first AI Agent token GOAT emerged, which is the token of the Truth Terminal project. The explosive popularity of GOAT has quickly made AI Agent Meme coins a new hotspot in the market, with numerous AI Agent-related applications springing up like mushrooms after rain, and hundreds of new AI Agent tokens being launched every day.

November 5: ACT token listed on Binance, surged 422.54% within 1 hour, market cap rose from $20 million to $240 million, increased over 10 times in 10 minutes.

6 12 month: According to GitHub data, the autonomous agent framework Eliza developed by the ai16z team ranked first in the GitHub December trend list, gaining 4531 stars this month, for a total of 7015 stars. The core engineering team of Eliza is preparing to start the new Eliza framework v2 upgrade.

December 7: The AI Agent launch platform on the Base chain, the Virtual Protocol protocol token VIRTUAL, has a market value exceeding three billion dollars.

Current Characteristics of AI Agent Project Development

In the year 2024, the development of AI Agent projects on the blockchain has shown several characteristics. Firstly, the related Meme hype has ignited a surge of attention for this sector. The emergence of AI agent launch platforms has also led to a sudden explosion of related projects, with some practical AI Agents starting to emerge. However, overall, the innovation in the AI Agent sector is still primarily focused on asset issuance and related Meme tokens.

Different AI Agent projects focus on different areas. For example, Virtuals Protocol focuses on launching AI Agents in the gaming and entertainment sectors, providing intelligent interaction and asset management functions for virtual idols, game characters, and more; while Griffa.in focuses on DeFi automation and research-driven AI applications, helping users with asset management, data analysis, content creation, and so on.

Related innovations are constantly emerging, such as the latest Spore.fun and aiPool, both of which utilize Phala Network's TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology for token issuance. This avoids the "runaway" and "insider" issues present in traditional presale models, creating a fair, transparent, and decentralized presale mechanism.

Currently Popular AI Agent Related Projects

AI16ZA Dao and Eliza

AI16ZA Dao and Eliza, two sides of the same product. First is AI16ZA Dao, a decentralized AI trading fund based on the Solana blockchain, also known as the "AI Investment DAO." Its core is to utilize AI Agent to gather market information, analyze community consensus both on-chain and off-chain, and automatically conduct token trading. By tokenizing operations, it combines AI trading strategies with decentralized governance, providing investors with more transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. It mimics Marc Andreessen, co-founder of A16Z, by managing fund assets through data analysis, investment strategy formulation, and autonomous execution of trading decisions. Its token symbol is AI16Z, the governance token of AI16Z DAO, used for participating in project governance and decision-making, while also representing the holder's stake in the fund.

Eliza is an open-source modular framework developed by Shaw, the founder of AI16ZA Dao, primarily used to create AI agents that can interact seamlessly with users and blockchain systems.

AI16Z is designed based on this framework, and AI16Z itself has become a representative project of the AI Agent framework. It incorporates an innovative incentive mechanism, whereby 5%-10% of the profits from all projects developed on the Eliza framework will be allocated to the AI16Z DAO fund, attracting more developers to participate in project development based on this framework. In other words, the more AI agent projects developed using the Eliza framework, the better the ecological AI agent projects will develop, and the greater the value that AI16Z can capture. The reverse is also true.

In summary, the core of Ai16z is the Eliza framework. With this framework, there is an opportunity to gain benefits from the development of AI Agent projects, and with these benefits, AI16z has a foundation of value.

Currently, projects related to A I 16z Dao are undoubtedly the hottest players in the Ai Agent space. According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the ecological market value of ai16z reached $1.63 billion, together with Virtuals, accounting for 56.8% of the AI Agent market share, making it one of the two dominant projects in the AI Agent market.

Virtuals Protocol

Virtuals Protocol is an AI Agent issuance platform launched on Base, aimed at gaming and entertainment. Its main product feature is to serve as a launch pad for AI Agents, allowing anyone to easily deploy AI Agents.

The project has designed its economic model to require the staking of the token VIRTUAL to create AI Agents. Users need to consume VIRTUAL tokens to purchase new AI Agent tokens. Therefore, as more AI Agents are issued on Virtuals, the demand for VIRTUAL tokens increases, naturally creating a positive growth flywheel effect.

As of December 2024, there have been tens of thousands of AI agents generated on it, and the market value of VIRTUAL-related ecological projects has also been continuously rising, currently reaching nearly 4 billion dollars.

Spore.fun

This is an AI Agent autonomous reproduction and evolution platform combined with the ai16z Eliza framework. In simple terms, the project aims to achieve autonomous reproduction and evolution of AI. This project simulates natural selection, allowing AI agents to reproduce, mutate, and evolve without human intervention.

What is interesting about this platform is that the projects it launches can automatically reproduce when certain conditions are met. To put it in simpler terms, Spore is an AI that automatically issues master plates and will multiply after a certain period of time, creating child plate AIs.

The AI Agent on it needs to meet certain conditions to obtain the right to "reproduce"—its tokens must reach a certain market valuation (such as $500,000) afterwards. This is not only a survival strategy but also sustains the prosperous development of the ecosystem.

The project has created two tokens, Adam $ADAM and Eve $EVE, which are airdrops issued by the Spore.fun project to holders of its token SPORE, which the project says are the parent and maternal AI characters of the Spore.fun platform. Three tokens have also produced four, and five tokens have also produced two.

The biggest innovation of this project may lie in the desire for AI Agents to breed, mutate, and evolve without human intervention, becoming increasingly intelligent and diverse with each generation.

The innovation of this project may lie in the use of Phala Network's TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology to issue tokens, which avoids the "runaway" and "insider" issues in traditional presale models, creating a fair, transparent, and decentralized presale mechanism.

aiPool

Developed on the AI16z Eliza framework, this is a system for AI to autonomously issue tokens. Simply put, users send money to the AI Agent's address, and the AI Agent issues tokens on its own. This project aims to solve challenges such as MEME coins running away, insider trading, and bots front-running.

The overall engineering implementation of aipool is not complicated, and the user sends SOL (non-CA address) to the wallet address of the AI Agent, which generates a private key in the TEE environment and presets access rights to manage the pool. When certain conditions are reached, AI will automatically create a liquidity pool on the on-chain DEX and distribute tokens to eligible participants, and the collected transaction fees will be pooled into the AI wallet.

The entire process is no different from the previously popular KOL funding FI, except that this round of funding FI is driven by AI Agents. The AI Agents independently control the private key addresses (which cannot be run away with), autonomously create transaction pools (setting whitelists, unlocking funds in batches, initial price setting, using oracle pricing, etc.) to reduce the impact of MEV arbitrage.

Technically, it uses the PhalaNetwork TEE technology solution, which enables AI to autonomously generate private keys.

Aixbt

An AI Agent Meme project created through the Virtuals Protocol. The project aims to provide users with accurate market trend predictions and sentiment analysis by analyzing hot topics and trends in the cryptocurrency market through artificial intelligence, helping users quickly seize market changes and potential investment opportunities.

It integrates real-time data from over 400 KOLs and social media, and uses its proprietary engine to deeply mine and analyze this data, extracting valuable market information and trend predictions for investors. This token belongs to the AI Meme sector, and its market value has now exceeded 600 million US dollars.

Griffain

An AI Agent search engine project based on the Solana chain, this token was selected for Binance Alpha's third phase.

The project is currently accessible only through invitations, requiring an early access pass or Genesis tokens. Users can create personal AI Agents in Griffain, which are categorized into personal agents and special agents, supporting command modifications and on-chain operations. The agent network allows users to manage tasks and access Griffain's agent network while providing built-in wallet functionality to simplify transaction operations.

It is worth mentioning that the Blinks ecosystem on Solana, which is an innovative tool launched by Solana, allows users to share blockchain links on different social platforms, such as Twitter and Telegram, enabling users to complete blockchain transactions directly on social media platforms.

In the Blinks ecosystem, Griffain serves as an artificial intelligence agent engine, providing intelligent support for various applications and operations within the Blinks ecosystem. For example, in on-chain operations of Blinks, Griffain can assist users in understanding and executing complex operational instructions more conveniently through technologies such as natural language processing, achieving a more intelligent user experience.

Blinks provides a wider range of application scenarios and user base for Griffain. Through Blinks' social sharing and convenient operation features, Griffain's applications can more easily reach ordinary users, thereby expanding their application scope in different fields, such as achieving more intelligent interactions and experiences in social interactions, gaming, entertainment, and other scenarios.

It is precisely because it is embedded in the Blinks ecosystem that Griffain has real application scenarios, which sets it apart from some AI Agent projects that are merely speculative concepts.

Spectral

The project was established long before the current most popular AI Agent projects; it was founded in 2020 and launched its machine intelligence network in 2023.

The project aims to transform the blockchain industry by converting natural language into Solidity code, thereby enabling the creation of smart contracts, NFTs, etc. It is dedicated to building a Web3 on-chain agency machine intelligence network that leverages cutting-edge AI and ML technologies to lower the barriers to writing, adjusting, and deploying smart contracts, promoting the deep integration of on-chain autonomous agents and the Web3 ecosystem.

The project mainly has three products, the first of which is Spectral Syntax, a platform designed to address the limitations of centralized AI models, allowing users to create blockchain-based AI Agents using large language models (LLMs) optimized for Solidity code. Through a conversational interface, users can build and explore custom on-chain agents that can autonomously deploy for tasks such as trading, transaction processing, and smart contract interactions with minimal supervision.

The second product is Spectral Nova, which serves as a machine intelligence network aimed at providing high-quality decentralized reasoning feedback for smart contracts. Through ecological incentive initiatives, it encourages top data scientists and machine learning engineers to build models that output reasoning feedback, helping smart contracts make decisions without human intervention, and all inferences can be ensured for correctness and security through zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable computing technologies, thereby aiding Web3 applications in enhancing service quality.

The third product is Inferchain, which serves as a bridge connecting Spectral Syntax and Spectral Nova. As an L2 customized by Spectral for Web3 development, it integrates with AI in a trustless and verifiable manner, ensuring smooth transmission of data and commands, maintaining transparency and decentralization across the network, and facilitating safer and more efficient interactions between various on-chain agents.

Existing Problems and Future

Looking at the above several typical AI Agent projects, we can find that the biggest problem currently existing in this track may be the inescapable Meme attribute. In the short term, from the perspective of asset issuance narrative, the most intuitive feeling about AI Agents is still MEME.

The explosive success of this round of AI Agent tracks began with the surge of the Meme token Goat, and the subsequent rise of Virtuals, which, although it is an AI Agent launch platform, is essentially a Meme launch platform similar to Pump.fun.

Messari's latest report points out that the development of AI Agent projects in the blockchain industry has not yet proven that their product adaptability is sufficient to support market speculation. Currently, AI Agents lack demand and do not have a clear user base. The launch of AI Agents relies on market speculation, but when the market realizes that they will still only be toys in the foreseeable future, this speculation cycle will collapse. In summary, it predicts that the AI Agent sector will struggle to recover after reaching its market value peak in the first quarter of 2025.

The combination of blockchain and AI Agents must ultimately be implemented in concrete applications, rather than just being a financial hype. To achieve this original intention, we must return to the essence of the integration of blockchain and AI: what does the development of AI Agents require from blockchain? What can AI Agents bring to blockchain?

For AI Agents, blockchain is a direction for achieving "autonomous payments and transactions." At this stage, blockchain has the characteristic of lower entry barriers, which can reduce friction costs similar to traditional finance, such as account opening and intermediaries. Moreover, on-chain transactions enable real-time trading, improving trading efficiency. For blockchain, the combination of AI Agents and blockchain also gives many blockchain projects themselves a more intelligent aspect.

Currently, the AI Agent projects in the blockchain field that we see being implemented are mainly focused on providing blockchain services through AI Agents, and there are very few projects that can actually be put into practice.

However, in the recent outlooks on the trends of the cryptocurrency industry for 2025 released by multiple institutions, a16z, VanEck, Bitwise, Hashed, Blockworks, Messari, and Framework all pointed out that products related to AI Agents will experience explosive growth in 2025.

We are optimistic about the development of the industry and look forward to 2025, when, after the bubble has burst, we can welcome the emergence of more practical related projects.