From insults to admiration, a glimpse into the love-hate relationship of AI Agent developers

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

At the beginning of the new year, the two major projects in the AI Agent space, ai16z and swarms, both reached new market value highs.

This should have been a cause for celebration, but ai16z founder Shaw dealt a heavy blow to swarms, publicly criticizing swarms project developer Kye Gomez, stating that he "does not understand how to write code and has a history of fraud," directly pointing to "character issues." Kye had previously attracted attention for being a 19-year-old high school dropout, praised as a "genius boy."

This dispute also led to both projects experiencing a temporary drop of over 20%, but just a day later, they regained their losses, with swarms even reaching a new high of $0.6.

This incident has once again placed the complex relationships among the developers behind AI Agents in the spotlight. Odaily Planet Daily will briefly outline the relationships among the representative developers behind AI Agents in this article, observing how these developers influence the price trends of AI Agents and related meme coins.

Central Node of the Relationship Map: ai16z Founder Shaw

According to Coingecko data, as of the time of writing, the current price of ai16z is $2.17, with a 7-day increase of 70%, and a market value reported at $2.4 billion, ranking third in the AI Agent sector, just behind the leading VIRTUAL token of the Base ecosystem and the established AI concept token FET.

Such impressive performance has naturally brought massive attention to its developer Shaw. Especially as Shaw has recently been actively roadshowing offline, closely engaging with community members from different regions, his public statements are seen as "one of the important signals in the AI Agent field." Shaw's previous strong promotion of the Space online conference for AI Agent development education is also regarded as a preaching act for the "deep integration of AI x Crypto."

Frequent proactive statements have garnered Shaw many supporters but have also become a trigger for conflicts with other project developers.

Relationship Map of AI Agent Developers

Shaw VS Kye: Unconcealed Mutual Dislike

Shaw had previously criticized swarms developer Kye. On December 21, 2024, he posted, "I really don't like publicly pointing out others' problems. Doing so poses a huge risk to our project, makes many people nervous, and I don't want to discourage those hardworking developers. But some people will steal others' work and try to take credit for it."

Shaw shared a post from August 2023 on the Reddit machine learning forum, which pointed out that a GitHub repo might show signs of stealing others' work, and that repo belongs to Kye, the developer behind Swarms. Comments also indicated that Kye had directly copied and pasted code from a certain codebase. "Based on his code submission frequency and content, Kye is likely generating code through ChatGPT."

Reddit Post and Comment Section Exposé

Recently, Shaw's criticism of Kye has been even more intense than before.

After Shaw's critical tweet was published, the official X platform account of the AI Agent project swarms replied, "Can you point out where the code has issues so we can fix it?"

Shaw did not back down, directly responding: "You are a thief and a liar; people from Princeton and senior members like Gwern from OpenAI have evidence." The links and screenshots refer to Kye's previous code being identified as automatically generated by ChatGPT.

Shaw's Response Quotes and Evidence

In response to Shaw's doubts, swarms developer Kye changed his previously confrontational tone and chose to respond amicably. "If there are questions about swarms, please submit feedback, and we will fix the issues immediately. We are committed to providing a seamless AI Agent building experience for everyone."

On December 22 last year, when Shaw first criticized Kye, the latter reacted very strongly. Kye believed that Shaw's sale of tokens harmed the project, causing many investors to lose money, while he himself continued to hold swarms and mcs without selling, claiming to be the "true one" dedicated to the functionality and practicality of AI Agents. After Shaw blocked his account, Kye mocked him in posts while also engaging in "identity attacks," claiming that Shaw, Eliza, and ai16z were all scams.

Shaw & a16z Crypto CTO: "DM'd Users"

As the initiator of the ai16z DAO organization fund, Shaw has had little contact with a16z, with the only direct contact being with a16z Crypto CTO. Previously, Shaw himself had posted to clarify that ai16z has no relationship with a16z and emphasized that purchasing related concept tokens is foolish. However, he added in the comments, "I am one of the fools," which further misled uninformed users into misunderstanding the relationship between the two and purchasing ai16z-related tokens.

In November last year, a16z Crypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin posted on X revealing ongoing dialogues between the venture capital firm and ai16z DAO. Previously, one of the founders of ai16z, Shaw, had posted on X seeking to contact a16z, to which Lazzarin replied, "Check your DM." At that time, ai16z was affected by this news, with a 24-hour increase of nearly 44%, and a market value exceeding $480 million.

Shaw & Baoskee: A Friendly Symbiotic Relationship Between Platform and Project

As a "decentralized VC-type investment platform," daos.fun's major achievement is the community-owned fund ai16z, thus the relationship between Shaw and baoskee, the founder of the daos.fun platform, is very friendly.

Previously, baoskee made a positive response regarding the "ai16z token permissions" issue, directly supporting ai16z and Shaw himself: "The ai16z token is indeed mintable, and the minting rights will be controlled by DAO token holders (with veto rights for protection)… We will conduct a thorough audit."

In a certain sense, the two can be considered to have a symbiotic relationship, like grasshoppers on the same rope.

Shaw & Lucid: Co-founders of ai16z

Another partner of ai16z DAO, Lucid, is Shaw's "right-hand man," having co-participated in the creation of ai16z and also initiated the Base ecosystem AI Agent BeffAI.

Previously, Shaw had posted seeking developers interested in Eliza Runescape plugin and agent development, and at that time, the contact person for the project was Lucid.

Shaw & Skely: Supporter and Initiator of the ai Pool Project

Skely, the initiator of the AI Agent project ai Pool (METAV), which raised over 30,000 SOL in just a few hours, is a developer that Shaw looks up to.

When Skely's X platform account was maliciously reported and banned, Shaw, as the founder of ai16z, promptly retweeted the community member's message to show support and later posted that the aiPool token had been released, and Skely was still working hard to restore his X account; he expressed his support for the latter without reservation.

Shaw & KOTO 9 X: Unilateral Admiration

KOTOX 9, which previously issued the AI meme coin KOTO, was suspected of being the target of Shaw's initial criticism (actually referring to swarms developer Kye), but Shaw later clarified: "It's not him; KOTO 9 X is a very good developer." There is no shortage of admiration in his words.

Shaw & Dan Romero: Promoters of Farcaster Ecosystem Development

In December last year, Shaw posted: "Farcaster is the future of programmable applications. Eliza has now integrated Farcaster. Moreover, he personally donated $420 worth of degenai tokens to every developer who embedded AI Agents into the Farcaster ecosystem using the Eliza framework at that time."

This move naturally received strong support from Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero, who replied in the comments, "LFG."

From this perspective, the two parties are somewhat similar to a partnership.

In addition, Shaw has actively promoted close cooperation between ai16z, Eliza, the decentralized computing network Aethir, the decentralized AI operating system 0G, and the well-known DEX platform Orca.

Other Developers of Smolworld: Shaw's Team Partners

At the end of last year, when asked in a tweet if he was no longer involved in Smolworld-related work and was instead focusing on Eliza and ai16z, Shaw responded: "Still managing the team, but daily development work is mainly handled by lordasado, Koshi, and Alextitonis."

Conclusion: AI Agents Have No Boundaries, But Developers Do

As the old saying goes: "Science knows no borders, but scientists have different nationalities." Similarly, the project accounts built on the X platform, smart contracts deployed on the chain, and corresponding AI Agents have no boundaries, but the countless developers behind AI Agents may have different boundaries and complex relationships filled with love and hate.

Although the AI Agents in the crypto field still have significant room for improvement compared to mainstream products, AI Agents and their developers are striving to promote the continuous development of projects, products, and the sector in their own ways. As swarms developer Kye said, "Fighting is a zero-sum game that harms both sides; only by working together can we create net gains."