Analyzing Swarms and other 6 major AI Agent chips: 1,647 large holders with a position of 1.58 billion dollars in tokens, a high-level accumulation strategy
Author: Frank, PANews
AI Agents have become a hot topic in on-chain trading, with new subdivisions emerging in the MEME field in just a month, from ai16z to Virtual, and then to Swarms. As various AI Agent tokens continue to emerge, which ones will break through the competition, and which are just fleeting concepts? There may be multiple angles to consider, but the flow of funds on-chain and changes in major players may still be the most important indicators.
PANews takes the recently popular Swarms token as the main object of analysis, comparing it with six high-market-cap AI Agent tokens' major addresses, attempting to "carve a boat to seek a sword" once again, to glimpse some secrets. The data range for this analysis includes: the initial purchase and sale conditions of the top 1000 holding addresses of Swarms tokens (data time cut off at January 6, 2025, 24:00), and the address overlap situation of six AI-related tokens with a market cap exceeding 100 million USD, including Fartcoin, GRIFFAIN, ZEREBRO, ai16z, arc, and Swarms (data time cut off at January 7, 2025, 14:00), as well as analysis of internal trading records.
Some quietly lay the groundwork at low prices, while others follow the trend to enter
First, looking at the timeline of when major players entered the market, most of them started entering after January 2, which was 12 days after the token was created. From a timing perspective, many major players in Swarms began buying only after the Swarms ecosystem started to heat up, failing to complete early positioning.
However, from the price curve of Swarms, if purchased before December 27, the price could basically be maintained below 0.02 USD, with nearly a 30-fold increase from the current highest price of 0.6 USD. Analyzing the initial purchase prices of these addresses, 202 addresses bought in the price range of 0.01 to 0.05 USD, while the highest number of addresses bought in the range of 0.3 to 0.4 USD.
The distribution of these two data points means that early investors in Swarms bought in batches at low prices during the period of price collapse, and this buying was relatively dispersed, not concentrated in a single time period. The benefit of this is that they could acquire chips at a lower price. Another group of major players began to enter significantly after the discussion around Swarms heated up, but their holding prices do not have much competitive advantage.
This distribution of chips may explain why the Swarms market appears to have significant short-term fluctuations. If early ambushers sell at high points, new major players have higher costs, and once a large sell-off occurs, it is easier to trigger sensitive nerves on both sides, leading to a sharp drop.
However, looking at the chip distribution, the main chips of Swarms are relatively dispersed. In the analysis of the top 1000 holding addresses, there are not many tokens sourced from the same address, and most addresses' initial token sources are mainly from on-chain exchanges. Therefore, there is little evidence of early major players acquiring large amounts of chips and then dispersing them to multiple addresses.
Additionally, by comparing internal trading addresses, it was found that addresses that purchased on the internal market did not appear among the current top 1000 holding addresses. Therefore, the early chips of this token have basically completed their rotation.
From the overall data, the average initial purchase price of Swarms tokens is 0.17 USD, and the average initial selling price is 0.23 USD, with the average initial purchase amount per address reaching 37,600 USD and the average initial selling amount about 28,200 USD. Comparing the buying and selling situation of individual addresses, the average initial selling price of these addresses is about 2.43 times the buying price.
The highest major holder has made 25 million USD profit without selling
Compared to other MEME tokens, the average initial purchase amount mentioned above is significantly higher, mainly due to the influence of some major addresses. The address with the highest initial transfer amount is Dsjzh2oj3HxyPefjQr5qqvbR5NrMnvBgptGLSQ3t8T5i, which transferred about 4.13 million USD from another address on December 31, followed by several transfers totaling about 500,000 USD, with the current holding value at 27.33 million USD.
The address it transferred from, 5HfrnyodRraAw63aRVPueD5Er4D1sRKMZBMx9LBbhUAs, began purchasing in large quantities as early as 8:22 AM on December 20, continuously buying, spending a total of 1.89 million USD to acquire 54.95 million Swarms at an average price of about 0.034 USD, currently yielding a profit of about 25.44 million USD.
According to tracking, the earliest associated purchase from this address began at 7:13 AM (the opening time of Swarms was around 6:45 AM on December 20). Notably, this address's associated funding address also began buying ai16z tokens on October 27, with a profit multiple of about 36 times.
Additionally, another address, 5NQTp9jHbzS4N9yKMWxwm8pPZW3RFSFPze3Edwss7iLe, transferred about 3.63 million USD worth of Swarms tokens on January 4. According to on-chain traces, this address also dispersed purchases through several addresses around January 2, ultimately aggregating the tokens into one address, which currently has a holding value of about 5.26 million USD.
Another address, H1zFMUjYLzJwcfgXEtwiJ2ykvxmBr7JW6afW29PkcEAe, also used a similar method, holding about 2.27 million USD, although the initial source of this address's tokens came from the Bitget exchange, followed by multiple on-chain purchases.
The combined initial transfer amount of these three addresses reached about 10.53 million USD. Looking at the purchasing process, the initial strategy involved multiple addresses making dispersed purchases, and once the heat around Swarms increased, all tokens were aggregated into a few addresses, becoming smart money in the eyes of on-chain hunters.
27% of addresses purchase multiple AI Agents; who is driving AI Agents?
In addition to analyzing the Swarms token addresses, PANews also conducted a comparative analysis of the top 1000 holding addresses of Fartcoin, GRIFFAIN, ZEREBRO, ai16z, arc, and Swarms. The analysis revealed that among the 6000 addresses involved, 1647 addresses appeared repeatedly, meaning that about 27% of addresses purchased multiple AI Agent-related tokens, with ZEREBRO seeming to be the favorite among AI major players, with 405 addresses purchasing this token. Next were arc (368 addresses) and ai16z (334 addresses).
Among these addresses, the one with the highest holdings is DJnHztNmw1H56uYm98PNu5eVZ5yhi9482rZ9zA22TUUz, which currently holds AI-themed tokens worth about 49.86 million USD, with the amount held in ai16z alone being about 42.70 million USD. Moreover, this is not the entirety of this address's holdings; as early as a month ago, this address had profited tens of millions of USD by purchasing ZEREBRO, GRIFFAIN, and other tokens.
Additionally, 3xzTSh7KSFsnhzVvuGWXMmA3xaA89gCCM1MSS1Ga6ka6 also holds about 42.84 million USD in AI-related tokens, with its on-chain holding value exceeding 73 million USD. According to social media information, this address is likely the wallet address of the early AI Agent address Truth Terminal.
Furthermore, there are many similar addresses; among the 1647 major addresses, the value of AI-related tokens held exceeds 1.58 billion USD, with about 29 addresses holding amounts exceeding 10 million USD, totaling approximately 690 million USD.
Rather than saying AI Agents may be the hottest trend in 2025, it is more accurate to say that AI Agents are essentially a better narrative for large capital investors.
Analyzing trading behavior outweighs tracking smart money addresses
As the analysis of on-chain data deepens, tracking smart money seems to have become a popular trend. However, from the perspective of major players, when laying out early chips, they do not want too many retail investors to enter the market and seize low-priced chips. Therefore, constantly changing wallets and making dispersed purchases have become the basic operations of major players.
As a result, blindly chasing smart money will gradually become ineffective and may even lead to being maliciously harvested. However, from multiple analyses of the operations of holding major players, even when using new addresses and making dispersed purchases, there are still management difficulties and issues with fund aggregation. Therefore, in most cases, major players still need to consolidate the funds from various wallets into one or a few wallet addresses for easier management, and they can also stimulate more following users to enter the market through small purchases during peak periods. Secondly, to quickly collect and buy in the early stages, these early layout players had to concentrate on making large purchases within a certain time frame. Although the amounts are relatively dispersed, such systematic purchasing may still become a signal. After all, their investment amounts often range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars; without a certain level of operational determination, they generally would not make frenzied purchases.
In summary, for ordinary retail investors, if they insist on using on-chain tracking to chase smart money, it may be more effective to focus on on-chain behaviors rather than chasing smart money addresses. Of course, an important prerequisite is to think like major players about what kind of narrative will be a good story; otherwise, facing an endless stream of new tokens, blind chasing is no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.