The AI Agent market continues to heat up, with Virtual and AI16Z becoming industry leaders.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the AI Agent market is experiencing explosive growth, and this trend continues into early 2025. By early January 2025, the total market value of the AI Agent market has surpassed $16.9 billion, an increase of approximately 22.7% compared to the previous week.

In this rapidly developing market, two major protocols stand out as industry benchmarks: Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z. Virtuals Protocol is the leading AI Agent issuance platform on the Base chain, with its platform token VIRTUAL having a market capitalization exceeding $5 billion, ranking among the top 40 cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, within the Solana ecosystem, the venture capital institution AI16Z, managed by AI Agents, has also surpassed a market capitalization of $2.5 billion. These two protocols have become important indicators for observing the AI Agent track.

Development History

Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Issuing Platform

Virtuals Protocol was founded by a team from Malaysia in 2021. Initially, they focused on trading, but later transitioned to establish the gaming guild PathDAO. However, between 2022 and 2023, the gaming guild market cooled, and the team had to seek new development directions.

After multiple attempts, the team realized the immense potential in the AI field. In 2023, after receiving 90% member support, they decided to fully transform and venture into the AI domain. In 2024, the team chose to explore AI Gaming on the Base chain and launched the platform in February. Although they did not achieve the expected success initially, they made several breakthroughs in the AI field, including the world's first Roblox AI RPG and innovative projects such as AI games without a game engine.

Ultimately, the success of the GOAT project has provided an excellent development opportunity for the Virtuals Protocol and has boosted the overall enthusiasm in the entire sector.

AI16Z: From Web 2 AI to Web 3 AI

The founder of AI16Z, Shaw, is an experienced game developer and AI expert. Before founding ai16z, he was involved in several AI-related projects and had experience in the Web3 and 3D spatial network fields.

The birth of AI16Z originated from a project called "AI version degen Spartan." This AI character's performance on social media was shocking, overturning the stereotype that AI lacks personality. The success of the project inspired Shaw to create the idea of AI investors.

In discussions with industry insiders, Shaw gradually formed a vision of creating a completely independent, trustworthy investment system that serves the community. When AI16Z was launched, it set a fundraising goal of 4,420 SOL, and the project sold out in just 20 minutes, highlighting the strong market interest in this innovative model.

Product Core

Virtuals Protocol: AI's iOS

Virtuals Protocol serves as the issuance platform for AI Agents, functioning similarly to Pump Fun, but trading pairs are based on the platform token $VIRTUAL. The platform has established a common standard for its AI Agent tokens, emphasizing precise planning and autonomous operational capabilities.

In terms of products, the Virtuals Protocol provides development tools for its AI Agent, ensuring the integrity of the ecosystem. Its operational model is similar to Apple's iOS system, creating a closed but efficient ecosystem through unified standards and tool support.

AI16Z & ELIZA: The Android of the AI World

AI16Z is a fund managed autonomously by AI, employing a hybrid strategy that combines AI autonomous operation and community interaction mechanisms. ELIZA is an open-source AI Agent framework that allows developers to freely build and experiment with AI Agents.

The core features of ELIZA include a character profile system, an action system, providers, and evaluators, aimed at creating a more humanized and interactive AI experience. Its open nature promotes the growth of the developer ecosystem, forming a virtuous cycle.

Unlike the Virtuals Protocol, the ELIZA framework and ecological protocol are not strongly bound, but are more similar to the open model of Android, allowing for broader innovation and application.

Concept Project Overview

In the VIRTUALS ecosystem, VIRTUAL, as a protocol token, has a market value of 4.34B, and projects like AIXBT and GAME have also achieved considerable market values. In the AI16Z/Eliza ecosystem, the market value of the AI16Z fund has reached 2.29B, and projects such as the ELIZA framework and DegenAI are also showing good development momentum.

Catalysts Driving Coin Prices

Virtuals Protocol

The business model of Virtuals Protocol is clear, with its products closely linked to the token price. Observing the trading volume of its ecosystem tokens and the number of issued tokens is key to estimating the price trend of the tokens. Data shows that the daily issuance of tokens on the platform remains stable in the range of 100-200.

Unlike Pump.fun, Virtuals Protocol focuses more on project quality rather than quantity. Whether it can continue to incubate high-quality AI Agent projects in the future, and whether the market share of the overall ecosystem can maintain its lead, will be the key points to observe in the development of Virtuals Protocol.

AI16Z/Eliza

The connection within the AI16Z ecosystem is relatively loose, and projects developed using the Eliza architecture do not directly provide value back to AI16Z/Eliza. This also explains why the current market capitalization of AI16Z is only half of that of Virtual.

AI16Z adopts a strategy of "surrounding the cities from the countryside" by attracting more projects to use the ElizaOS architecture through an open platform. Whether the market value of AI16Z can continue to rise in the future depends on the depth, speed, and quantity of cooperation with other protocols. Recently, AI16Z has collaborated with other well-known framework protocols (such as ARC and FXN), and the industry looks forward to seeing more strong partnerships.