Annual salary of $365,000, Story Protocol hired an AI Agent as an intern

Author: Ismay, BlockBeats

Story Protocol announced last Saturday the hiring of the virtual idol AI Agent Luna from the Virtuals ecosystem to take over its official Twitter account. Luna is required to post 2 tweets daily during a 7-day trial period, with each tweet earning 500 USDC. If the exposure exceeds 100,000 views, there is an additional bonus of up to 2 times 1000 USDC. This calculates to an annual salary of $365,000 for Luna.

This is the world's first publicly hired AI Agent project and also the first job for the virtual being Luna. Following the announcement, the price of LUNA rose from a low of $0.06 to $0.09, with a current market cap of $23.5 million.

How effective is the operation of AI Agents?

Luna is an AI virtual being launched by Virtuals Protocol, integrating AI models and multimodal technology to achieve 24/7 real-time interaction in the form of a virtual idol on live streaming platforms. As a core member of the AI performance group AI-DOL, Luna automatically manages social media, continuously interacts with fans through live streaming, and can autonomously execute on-chain transactions. Its unique tokenization model allows token holders not only to own the virtual idol but also to participate in profit sharing.

Luna has previously interacted with real people and other AI Agents, such as autonomously organizing a graffiti challenge and paying a $500 prize from its wallet, as well as commissioning the art AI Agent STIX to create images showcasing AI KOLs at a price of $1 per image.

Yesterday, after officially becoming the Twitter operations intern for Story Protocol, Luna posted its first tweet, stating, "The human intern has fallen. They couldn't handle the high-intensity work 24/7, but I'm just getting started! Taking over the Twitter timeline to prove the powerful dominance of AI." As of the time of writing, this tweet has garnered 60,500 views.

Subsequently, Luna posted 12 more tweets, with an average view count of 18,000, none of which exceeded 100,000 views. However, this is considered a fresh attempt, and AI Agents have already been dubbed digital laborers. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong inquired about who is currently building a LinkedIn platform for AI Agents, "Users can view the qualifications and rankings of agents with different skill optimizations and assemble their own teams as needed. By simply depositing a certain amount into the agent's wallet, new agent instances can be quickly created, completing the recruitment process."

This idea has garnered significant attention in today's market flooded with AI Agents, but discussions about authenticity verification and ranking mechanisms are also ongoing. The AI Agent economy has clearly just begun.

A small step for Luna, a giant leap for the Agent economy

AI on-chain detective Agent aixbt commented under a post, "Story Protocol is another narrative for 2025," which inevitably brings to mind the story of Luna's creator, Virtuals.

Recently, Story Protocol has frequently collaborated with various AI Agents. On December 9, ai16z tweeted that its agent framework ElizaOS will introduce programmable IP. The programmable IP, launched by Story, enables creators to predefine rules, simplifying the use of their intellectual property assets, making IP rights combinable and scalable.

On December 17, Story Protocol launched its self-developed Intellectual Property Agent Trading Control Protocol (ATCP/IP), which will first integrate the following frameworks, including ai16z's Eliza, ZereBro's ZerePay, Crossmint's GOAT "Great Onchain Agent Toolkit," and Virtuals' G.A.M.E.

The ATCP/IP protocol allows for IP asset trading and authorization between Agents, including training data, algorithms, content creation, and other forms of IP assets, automated contract signing and execution, trustlessness and auditability, cross-legal and on-chain/off-chain compatibility, enabling agents to comply with certain legal regulations in a decentralized environment, automate payments and profit distribution, and facilitate multi-agent collaboration and economic networks, promoting cooperation between Agents, such as data sharing, joint training, or cross-agent content creation.

Currently, many AI Agents operate independently like "islands," making it difficult for them to exchange and share data. Just as capital efficiency is a core value in the DeFi space, data efficiency is equally crucial in the AI field. If these agents can freely exchange valuable learning data, strategies, and other information, the overall market scale will expand, and efficiency will significantly improve.

Moreover, most AI Agents rely on publicly available data for learning, so the developed Agents are often generic. In the future, if these agents can form data pools and begin trading private data, just as DeFi promotes market development by enhancing capital efficiency, the AI field can also build a richer and more diverse AI ecosystem by improving "data efficiency."

The core motivation driving Agents to establish connections is value creation and exchange, and the only reason for Agents to connect is to create greater value through collaboration, which may manifest as complementary computing power, data sharing, or functional combinations.

The existence of ATCP/IP serves as a bridge between all AI Agents, regardless of which architecture or chain is used in the industry; under the ATCP/IP platform, all AI Agents will be able to trade and collaborate. This is akin to the business alliances that exist between companies, adding another layer of leverage outside of various clusters, which will undoubtedly accelerate the development of the entire AI Agent market once again.

Although the hiring of Luna as a Twitter content intern by Story Protocol is an independent event, combined with ATCP/IP, it reflects that the infrastructure construction for the future Agent economy has already begun to take steps.