5 categories to watch for in crypto x AI agents (+ examples)

Author: 0x3van

Compiled by: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

AI is the main theme of this cycle, and many believe it is a track that will continue to exist and evolve. Conversely, there are many reasonable criticisms that most AI agents today are superficial, and we need another 3-5 years to make this technology more meaningful.

As a preface, the categories of Crypto x AI projects span multiple levels. The true technological prospects of Crypto x AI are mostly related to guiding better reasoning through crypto economics or providing decentralized access to computation. Delphi's article is a good starting point for understanding the entire stack.

However, this article focuses on our current state regarding agents. While there are exciting innovations at the lower levels of the stack, agents seem to have captured the attention of the mainstream cryptocurrency community. As Crypto x AI agents continue to evolve, here are 5 trends worth watching.

Trend 1 | Framework + Launchpad: Value accumulation is becoming important, and frameworks may persist

Value accumulation is becoming important. Why is this the case?

To take a step back, why do people hold assets? There are two main reasons people exchange dollars for assets:

• They can sell the asset to others at a higher price due to the narrative rotation that brings in new buyers;
• Over time, the asset will generate more cash flow for them.

@izebel_eth wrote in his article "Old Coins Worse, New Coins Better" that the only thing that matters is the flow of funds. The following two reasons reflect two bullish fund flows:

• Growth of new holders;
• Token sinking (leaning towards deflation);

However, in most cases, we do not see anything resembling true token deflation or value accumulation. Using tokens through agent terminals (like AIXBT) is more akin to staking than traditional value accumulation.

This is also why frameworks like Virtuals, ai16z, zerebro, and arc have recently gained popularity. ai16z started primarily as an investment DAO and has become a leader among such protocols since releasing details about its upcoming launchpad and token value accumulation.

Today, the framework + launchpad space is very saturated, and first-mover advantages have propelled their success. There are many reasonable doubts about the utility surrounding these launchpads, as many agents themselves are of little use. However, those frameworks (eliza V2 + launchpad, zentients, arc, and their handshake plans) have not yet launched their main products. If they successfully attract developers and users, they may continue to lead the entire track.

Why will frameworks continue to exist?

• Regardless of whether agents have real value, frameworks for launching agents will perform well because they still have a "product-market fit" (PMF) with speculation. Framework + launchpad allows users to have both a factory and a casino. To some extent, Virtuals has already replaced pump.fun in the Base ecosystem.

• More optimistically, as technology advances, leading frameworks may launch more advanced agents, while the development speed of open-source software libraries like Eliza will be faster. Many of these launch platforms will also become a coordinating layer for communication between groups and agents, which will use their tokens for some form of value transfer. For more in-depth articles on Eliza's value capture, see this piece written by Teng Yan last week.

Virtuals, ai16z, Zerebro, and arc are currently the main players in this track, but the launchpad space is becoming increasingly saturated. The frameworks with the fastest iteration speed, greatest scalability, and most unique features are the ones to watch.

Trend 2 | The next round of agents will prioritize utility and value accumulation, DeFAI (DeFi x AI) may be the first type of agent to achieve product-market fit

Most agents only have meme tokens with no utility. For the agent industry to grow, the next round of agents must further refine use cases. New opportunities will come from agents that can truly accumulate value and take action. I believe that in the next year, tier 1 agents will leap to tier 3 agents.

We will first see this in the DeFi space. We will see more terminals that allow people to express desired outcomes in natural language or voice, as well as agents that can execute tasks behind the scenes. Existing wallets and protocols will also integrate agents to improve user experience.

Representative projects include: Wayfinder, griffain, Hey Anon, Limitus, neur.

Trend 3 | Consumer Layer: Entertainment agents, autonomous worlds, and the revival of gaming

Attention-driven agents will develop more complex personalities and multimedia interactivity. This could trigger the next wave of gaming and metaverse technologies.

One issue with existing agents is that they are becoming increasingly similar, turning into commoditized, exaggerated chatbots. While some agent projects will shift towards infrastructure (many are already doing so), some are starting to think about useful products/applications, while others may continue down the path of attention tokens. However, the next generation of attention agents will be better, developing more complex personalities and offering greater interactivity. This can be achieved through audiovisual expressions or by giving agents a three-dimensional presence and physical bodies.

There have already been early attempts in this area; Jeffy wrote an article about implanting bodies into Zerebro, and some well-known KOL agents have launched directly through audiovisual forms like short videos. Slopfather and Ropirito are two early adopters of the video model.

However, I believe more agent projects will adopt these features to make agents more vibrant. The product-market fit (PMF) in this field will be achieved through the consumer layer, where individual users may want to create personalized agent companions or interact with KOLs. This trend is already gradually spreading outside of cryptocurrency, with some users spending hundreds of hours talking to AI companions on websites like character.ai, which Google recently acquired for $2.7 billion.

Moreover, these 3D agents may find market fit in the existing consumer layer, especially in gaming and the metaverse. Agents can add deeper backstories to the worlds in stories. Imagine having an agent act as an NPC, capable of completing tasks or playing games independently, with evolving memories and personalities. True game autonomous worlds may be realized through agents.

Representative projects include:

• soulgraph aims to provide tools for agents to have more customized personalities and memories;

• Holoworld AI has established Web2 partnerships with companies like L'Oréal, Bilibili, and Fox to create digital avatars.

There are also representative projects in gaming, metaverse, virtual worlds, and autonomous agents:

• Hyperfy is a metaverse platform that allows anyone to create virtual worlds and uses Eliza plugins;

• Parallel Colony is an AI simulation game where the agents are the players, and you can converse with them;

• Digimon is a creature game similar to Pokémon, where the creatures evolve mentally based on interactions;

• SMOL also uses the Eliza framework, with characters in the game being agent-driven by LLMs, capable of acting in the virtual world based on your commands.

Trend 4 | Agentic Organizations: The Return of DAOs

Decentralized Agentic Organizations are the next form of DAO evolution. Swarm or multi-agent systems are exciting because they can coordinate and execute more advanced strategies, similar to running a company. Heterogeneous swarms composed of many different types of specialized agents/models working together may outperform a single large model.

While fully autonomous agents and swarms may still be far from us, the next iteration of DAOs will likely focus on the interaction between individuals and groups. This will reduce the inefficiencies of bureaucracy and lower the costs and time of human execution. In the context of fund flows, the next step for income-generating agents is to become complete organizations that earn income.

Representative projects include:

• Agent swarm infrastructure: Projects like SwarmNode.ai, FXN, etc., specialize in multi-agent frameworks and coordination work, while more mainstream agent frameworks like Zerebro and ai16z have also expressed intentions to build at this layer.

• DAO launchpad: Most of the early traffic we see is concentrated on investment DAOs. I believe daos.fun will be the first major DAO launchpad that nurtured ai16z. There are also some newer launch platforms like daos.world, where AI-driven funds like 3BC are gaining attention.

Trend 5 | Verifiable Agents: Current agents will evolve towards greater autonomy and truly possess their own liquidity

Currently, most agents require a high degree of human intervention. The next wave of agents will move towards true autonomy, starting with managing their own funds.

The fit between agents and cryptocurrency lies in the fact that cryptocurrency provides financial pathways for truly economic agents. However, most agents do not control their own treasury or have their treasury managed by human teams. To achieve truly economic agents, agents must be able to manage their own funds autonomously. This can allow agent behavior to begin to evolve, as you can impose economic constraints on agents, requiring them to pay for their own reasoning costs, introducing Darwinism into the agent world where they must earn income to survive.

Representative projects include:

• Freysa is one of the first agents to control its own agent and has performed well (including gaining the attention of Musk). Recently, they announced they are building a framework that allows agents to have verifiable autonomy in TEE + agent-controlled keys;

• Lit Protocol also has an agent framework that allows autonomous agents to conduct on-chain transactions through a private key storage and execution system;

• Galadriel launched an SDK called Proof of Sentience, enabling developers to comprehensively verify agents on-chain.

Conclusion: Before we see 1 billion people on-chain, we will first see 1 billion agents on-chain

The user experience of cryptocurrency itself is unfriendly to human users. But agents will not mind this friction. We will start with interactions between humans and agents, but the direction of cryptocurrency AI development is the interaction between agents, where swarms of autonomous agents will interact and trade on-chain, taking responsibility for their own economic conditions.

To empower agents with economic power, enabling them to incentivize behavior (pay service fees) and coordinate real-world activities, they need the ability to control and deploy capital. Cryptocurrency is the "home planet" for these agents—blockchain will enable agents to participate in permissionless financial activities. Stablecoins and high-performance Layer 1s are ideal tools for achieving cost-efficient, round-the-clock, global transactions.

Beyond the current hype and narratives, we have ample reason to maintain long-term excitement about the on-chain agent economy. Many real use cases, including DAOs and income-generating agents, are much closer than we think.