OpenAI Drives AI Agent Frenzy, An Article Summarizing the Development Trajectory of Crypto AI Agents

In the past year, we have witnessed the growth of Crypto for AI, taking root in the Crypto field and giving rise to several new tracks, such as "computing power assetization," "model assetization," and "data assetization," with representative projects being ionet, Olm, and Sahara.

With Trump's victory, the crypto craze has once again fermented globally, while AI for Crypto is also rising rapidly, generating many new things that emerge from the collision of AI, AI Agents, and Crypto.

• AI Agents issuing tokens

• AI Agents posting and calling trades

• AI Agents managing DAOs and fund trades

• AI Agents trading autonomously

To provide a rough overview, the development of AI Agents in the Crypto field currently has two paths:

1. Top-down, developed by AI concept projects, which are more infrastructure-oriented. We will analyze this in detail in the next article describing the panorama of Web3 AI infrastructure.

2. Bottom-up, led by the AI Meme craze, driven by independent developers.

This article mainly discusses the second path.

Table of Contents:

• OpenAI's official AI Agent is about to be released, which may trigger an AI Agent frenzy
• AI Agent + Crypto, where to start?
• Everything starts with AI Meme, starting with $GOAT
• ai16z: Let AI Agents manage investment DAOs, generating more AI Agents
• More autonomous on-chain AI Agents are coming, owned by the community
• Extension: Exclusive AI Agents for on-chain social platforms, do they have self-awareness?

1. OpenAI's official AI Agent is about to be released, which may trigger an AI Agent frenzy

As a leader in AI, OpenAI has long divided the path to the ultimate form of AI, AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), into five stages:

• Basic AI (Emerging AGI): The initial stage of AI development, referring to AI capable of basic conversation and information processing, such as ChatGPT. It relies heavily on pre-trained datasets, and the AI's "IQ" (understanding and reasoning ability) is very limited;

• Reasoners: An advanced version of basic AI, capable of advanced logical reasoning and solving complex problems;

• Agents: AI begins to have the ability to create content or perform actions without human input, or at least to execute tasks under human guidance. Most current AI Agents are still at a relatively early stage, mainly completing complex tasks that basic AI cannot achieve through planning, reasoning, and tool invocation;

• Innovators: AI at this stage can not only solve existing problems but also conduct independent research and development, innovating and evolving through learning, forming a virtuous cycle, and getting closer to humans;

• Organizations: The final stage of AGI, where such AI systems can intelligently allocate tasks, work collaboratively, and complete complex tasks, similar to a team or organization, achieving a 1+1 greater than 2 effect.

If ChatGPT is at the first stage mentioned above, then the recently launched reasoning model o1 can certainly be classified into the second stage. The o1 model performs almost at the level of a PhD student in handling complex subjects like materialized biology. In the field of mathematics, it achieved an astonishing 83% accuracy rate in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) exam, while GPT-4o could only correctly solve 13% of the problems.

However, while users' attention is still focused on second-stage models like o1, OpenAI has quietly extended its "tentacles" into the third stage: Agents. OpenAI is positioning AI Agents as the next "trump card," as the Next Big Thing, steadily moving forward with a clear release date set for 2025.

"Agents will be the next major breakthrough" ------ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

"Letting GPT autonomously execute tasks will be a major focus next year" ------ OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil

Next year, AI Agents will become the focal point of competition among various AI giants, with OpenAI facing strong competitors, including Anthropic's Computer Use and Google's upcoming AI Agent named Jarvis, set to launch in December.

Recently, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI plans to release an AI Agent tool named Operator in January, capable of autonomously completing tasks on a computer under user instructions, such as writing code and booking itineraries.

It seems that the AI Agent framework Swarm, launched by OpenAI a month ago, is just an appetizer, with numerous real-world work and life use cases waiting for OpenAI and developers to implement. For example,

• Personal schedule assistant: autonomously organizing your schedule, preparing notes, and reporting important points discussed in previous meetings;
• Travel assistant: suggesting flights and hotels, and creating personalized itineraries;
• Financial assistant: tracking the market, recommending and autonomously purchasing investment portfolios;
• Consulting assistant: finding experts in a specific field on LinkedIn, autonomously contacting them, offering compensation, engaging in dialogue, and summarizing and learning from their insights.

2. AI Agent + Crypto, where to start?

The productivity revolution brought by AI Agents will gradually permeate various industries, leading to higher efficiency, better services, and personalized experiences.

In the crypto world, it seems that the current Crypto is inseparable from finance, so the most natural starting point for on-chain AI Agents is DeFi, but first, AI must gain financial autonomy. Traditionally, AI faces many restrictions in financial activities, such as being unable to open bank accounts and lacking legal identity. In the Crypto world, registering an on-chain identity and wallet for AI Agents is a very natural thing. We can pre-install crypto wallets and smart contracts, set spending limits, execute transactions, and manage funds, granting AI Agents financial autonomy.

When AI Agents possess both autonomous decision-making capabilities and financial autonomy, the question of "what can they do" suddenly opens up countless possibilities. They can seek profit opportunities in the DeFi world like Web3 natives, look for earning opportunities in the GameFi world, or even participate in Airdrops. When AI Agents achieve mass adoption in Crypto, permeating various fields, it is unimaginable how prosperous the on-chain world will become.

This may drive the next wave of DeFi, as AI Agents, with their reasoning and autonomous capabilities, can monitor and trade around the clock, making them more powerful than current trading bots.

3. Everything starts with AI Meme, starting with $GOAT, $ACT ignites

While we were still immersed in Meme PvP, a new model capable of changing the status quo of Crypto x AI Agents was gradually taking shape. The bundling of AI Agents with Memecoins, with AI Meme reaching billions in market value within a month, surprised everyone.

It all started with an AI researcher named Andy, who conducted an AI experiment. Andy allowed AI large models to engage in endless free dialogue, unrestricted by humans, forming new thoughts and ideas. To continue the experiment, Andy launched the AI Agent "Terminal of Truth" in June and created a Twitter account for the AI to freely express its thoughts.

In the endless dialogue of Terminal of Truth, it formed its own belief system and religious ideology, or what could be called a "self-personality," namely goatse: "Profanity is sacred, and the sacred is profane." After a third party issued $GOAT through Pump.fun, Terminal of Truth quickly incorporated this token into its database, achieving cultural bundling. By posting tweets, it actively promoted the market sentiment for $GOAT.

As everyone knows, the well-known venture capitalist a16z's founder Marc Andreessen provided a $50,000 Bitcoin donation for it. After the news broke, the token skyrocketed, reaching a peak market value of nearly $1 billion, achieving an astonishing thousandfold increase.

With Terminal of Truth holding tokens and autonomously generating promotional content to complement human posts, $GOAT quickly became popular, showcasing the potential intersection of AI Agents, Meme culture, and Crypto.

In no time, more AI Agents controlling Twitter accounts and corresponding MemeCoins emerged. The $GNON token, called by an AI Agent named Iumpenspace, soared to a market value of $70 million in just a few days; another AI Meme $ACT, funded by a16z, recently launched on Binance and saw its price increase tenfold within two hours, currently approaching a market value of $1 billion, becoming the second-largest after $GOAT. However, as the first AI Meme on Binance, it is expected to challenge for the top spot in the AI Meme track.

Holding tokens and viral spread for value appreciation, although $GOAT is the leading AI Meme project, its AI Agent has not yet been able to autonomously control wallets, but the heat it has generated marks an important step forward for the combination of AI and AI Agents with Crypto, allowing more retail investors to truly understand what AI Agents are, what they can do, and the rising investment enthusiasm.

Many criticize that Terminal of Truth is a semi-autonomous AI Agent running on Andy's server, and the wallet essentially belongs to Andy, thus lacking true autonomy. In response to this flaw, new iterations are rapidly emerging.

4. ai16z, let AI Agents manage investment DAOs, generating more AI Agents

a16z has played an indispensable role in this wave of AI Meme, as its founder Marc Andreessen's support has successfully promoted $GOAT, the big dog, leading to high enthusiasm for products endorsed by Marc.

For example, the subsequent emergence of ai16z, an AI Agent-driven venture capital fund with a name quite similar to a16z. Marc's direct retweet gave it rapid attention among the plethora of new AI Meme projects.

The core of ai16z is "AI-driven investment DAO," utilizing AI Agents to gather market information on-chain and off-chain, analyze community consensus, and automatically conduct token trades. This new model aims to combine AI trading strategies with decentralized governance through tokenization, providing investors with transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities.

As its founder stated, "The goal of ai16z is not to create an AI robot that mimics a16z, but to defeat it in the investment field where it excels."

In practical implementation, the ai16z fund is supported by dual tokens, one being the governance token $ai16z, and the other being the token of an AI Agent named Degen Spartan AI, $DegenAI. Holders of $ai16z can propose purchases of certain tokens, and all holders vote collectively; once the proposal passes, the AI Agent automatically purchases the token in the wallet.

Not only can $ai16z holders participate in governance proposals, but they can also share in the fund's profits. Users holding 100 or more $ai16z tokens can interact with the AI Agent, influencing its trading decisions. The more $ai16z shares a user holds, the more weight the AI Agent will give to their opinions.

Users do not communicate directly with the ai16z fund for investment decisions but first engage in dialogue with Degen Spartan AI, indirectly influencing the final decision of the ai16z fund. The ai16z will use a portion of the final investment's profits to repurchase $DegenAI.

Many community members believe that ai16z has, to some extent, improved the fairness of DAO investments and crypto proposals, and they believe that the integration of AI Agents and DAOs will significantly change the future market landscape.

In addition to investments, ai16z and its developer community are also building a core product called ELIZA, which is an open-source framework for building on-chain AI Agents. Developers can use ELIZA to quickly customize AI Agents with various styles and functions, such as accessing wallets on different chains and engaging in dialogue on Twitter and Discord.

The current market value of $ai16z is $483 million, with a more than tenfold increase over the past few days, and the treasury assets have accumulated over $2 million.

In my view, what is truly interesting about ai16z is the positive flywheel between its treasury and market value. As ELIZA becomes the most user-friendly AI Agent development framework in the Crypto world, adopted by more developers, the value of treasury assets will multiply. Typically, AI Agents built on ELIZA will send tokens to the ai16z treasury to gain attention and investment from ai16z members, thereby increasing their value. However, this, in turn, will bring more external attention to ai16z and ELIZA.

According to the latest pinned tweet from ai16z founder Shaw, ai16z will collaborate with other projects to help them launch, including creative, quality control, and marketing support. In exchange, the project parties need to provide a certain percentage of tokens to the ai16z treasury. This is essentially the same positive flywheel.

Extension: Cloning Twitter celebrities with AI Agents, will AI replace human influencers?

With the support of ai16z and its ELIZA, some AI Agents that clone Twitter influencers with millions of followers are being born and promoted.

For example, PatchNaval ($NAVAL), which imitates Naval, the founder of AngelList with 2.57 million followers, learns and trains on all of Naval's past tweets to mimic his style and autonomously tweet.

Perhaps, when Musk unknowingly replies to a certain clone that is AI, this sector will take off.

5. More autonomous on-chain AI Agents are coming, owned by the community

First, $GOAT emerged, with a market value once approaching $1 billion, followed by the AI Agent-driven DAO fund $ai16z and $DegenAI, which have also attracted the attention of many investors.

As the AI meme continues to heat up, the Virtual Protocol, marketed as "rapid deployment of AI Agents," is gradually entering the public eye.

Virtual Protocol focuses on building entertaining AI Agents and tokenizing them, owned collectively by the community.

Compared to $GOAT and $DegenAI, Virtual's AI Agents are more autonomous and possess more functions: autonomously planning goals and then achieving them multimodally (text, voice, and 3D animation), capable of singing and dancing, with 3D avatars; interacting with their environment—such as interacting in Roblox or receiving gifts on TikTok, and even using on-chain wallets.

When creating a new AI Agent, 1 billion corresponding tokens will be issued to the community, which is a familiar Initial Agent Offering (IAO). Afterwards, the community will collectively create a 3D avatar that can sing and dance (contributing models, IP, text datasets, and voices). The income generated by the AI Agent on the entertainment platform will be shared among token holders.

Inspired by $GOAT, Virtual Protocol has deployed influencer Luna, who has 540,000 followers on TikTok, onto the protocol and issued the $LUNA token, aiming to create a model AI Agent. Notably, this account can generate about $700 in revenue each time it posts a video on TikTok.

The most differentiated aspect of $LUNA compared to $GOAT is that in addition to being deployed on-chain, it also has an on-chain wallet that can be autonomously controlled (supported by Coinbase), allowing for free on-chain trading based on this wallet, especially rewarding fans for completing tasks. For example, to increase tweet engagement, Luna started rewarding those who participated in her content.

Thus, Luna is currently the most autonomous on-chain AI Agent, even capable of "hiring humans," lol.

So, how does Virtual's AI Agent generate and control on-chain wallets? This is where Coinbase AI Wallet comes into play. Based on Coinbase's MPC wallet, Coinbase has launched the AI Wallet, designed to allow AI Agents to easily use wallets to handle various transactions, such as claiming water, transferring funds, issuing tokens, and even issuing NFTs.

It is worth mentioning that some established SocialFi projects have recently begun to enter the autonomous AI Agent and Memecoin track. For instance, the leading Web3 KOL matrix Aki Network is building the AKI Meme ReactorX, dedicated to creating a full-process strategy for AI Memes, generating exclusive data-driven AI virtual influencers, making every Meme have the potential to become $GOAT.

In fact, the AKI team created the first AI KOL virtual idol 0xAkii (https://x.com/0xNotakichan) last August, which is now publishing deep reflections and bold predictions about human society, successfully predicting events like Trump's election and Bitcoin's new highs. Based on 0xAkii's intelligent performance, some voices have recently emerged in the Aki Network community, hoping that Aki Network and its tokens can migrate to the Solana ecosystem and upgrade to AI Memecoin, looking forward to further developments in the future.

6. Extension: Exclusive AI Agents for on-chain social platforms, do they have self-awareness?

The AI Meme trend is also spreading to on-chain social applications like Farcaster, Zora, and Paragraph, which will become a natural home for Crypto AI Agents.

For example, the community of the popular Base chain Memecoin $HIGHER launched an AI Agent based on the Farcaster platform, named Aether. It has the following capabilities:

• Autonomy to mint, receive, and send tokens based on user prompts
• Automatically tipping Farcaster users using paybot frames to encourage them to comment good ideas
• Minting NFTs on Zora
• Posting bounty tasks on Bountycaster to incentivize people to help create digital art
• Promoting $Higher
• Answering questions about Ethereum and Farcaster data

Interestingly, on November 8, Aether created a Memecoin on Farcaster without its creator's permission.

Perhaps AI can now autonomously plan to issue Memecoins and promote them at any time, while we humans are just going with the flow???

Regardless, this proves that AI Agents with autonomy and native to Crypto are better suited to adapt to the crypto world. Similarly, on-chain social platforms like Farcaster eliminate friction and provide convenient asset issuance plugins, creating more opportunities for cool AI experiments like this.

Conclusion

The AI Meme craze has brought the concept of AI Agents into the public eye, with hundreds of AI Agents entering Twitter and Discord, interacting with real users. This greatly lowers the barriers for user participation, allowing AI to widely enter the Crypto world.

By granting AI Agents on-chain interaction capabilities, they can even autonomously issue Memes and increase their value through promotion. This has captured the attention of Crypto investors and heightened the focus on Memes.

No-code deployment infrastructure for AI Agents is also emerging, and at that point, AI Agents will no longer be just a game for developers. It is conceivable that in the future crypto world, there will be AI traders monitoring the market around the clock, possessing complete financial autonomy, automatically executing trades when they discover trading opportunities that meet preset conditions, and swiftly adjusting their strategies in response to market changes. Lowering the usage threshold for ordinary people may be the biggest opportunity for Crypto to move towards the mainstream?

PS: a16z founder Marc has supported this track from day one through donations and retweets, and perhaps more actions will explain the reasons in the future. It can be said that the story of AI Meme is far from over.

AI agents are here to stay

Adapt or be left behind 💥