Author: Primitive Astronaut

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

Have you ever seen those tables that show how much you need to earn back after an investment loss? For example, when your position drops by 10%, you need it to rise by 11% to break even:

$100 → $90 = -10%

$90 → $100 = +11%

When you lose 20%, you need a 25% increase to break even:

$100 → $80 = -20%

$80 → $100 = +25%

When you lose 50%, you need a 100% increase, and so on. This relationship grows exponentially and is very counterintuitive.

Many cryptocurrency investors sometimes still lack this basic investment knowledge.

Furthermore, in extreme cases of losing 99% or more, this counterintuitive exponential growth becomes even more apparent:

• When losing 99%, you need to earn back 100 times (i.e., +10000%).
• When losing 99.5%, you need to earn back 200 times (+20000%).
• When losing 99.8%, you need to earn back 500 times (+50000%).
• When losing 99.9%, you need to earn back 1000 times (+100000%).
• When losing 99.99%, you need to earn back 10000 times (+1000000%).

This is why stop-loss is a must for active traders. Although the Virtuals Protocol platform was hit hard last week (the price drop was seen as a sign of poor technology), I believe it will remain a leader for quite some time.

I emphasize this at the beginning to draw attention to the seemingly close yet vastly different distinctions between 99.8% and 99.9%.

Next, let's look at the token data created on Pump.fun: since the beginning of January, the total number of tokens is 6 million, with an average daily creation of about 50,000 tokens.

Now think about how many "reliable" projects have been born on Pump.fun? In this field, the term "reliable" actually means very little. For the sake of argument, we will define "reliable" as "market cap exceeding $10 million," after all, we are all here to find the next hundredfold coin, which is what "reliable" means to most people.

On average, only 1% of the projects launched daily on Pump.fun can reach the "graduation" standard of a market cap over $70,000. Moreover, many projects run away shortly after just meeting or slightly exceeding that market cap.

Looking at last month, this was one of the most active periods in Pump.fun's history:

There were 10 projects with a market cap exceeding $10 million, of which only 7 exceeded $20 million. In other words, only 0.0014% of the projects launched on Pump.fun that month had a market cap exceeding $10 million, meaning 99.9986% of the projects failed to meet the standard.

Now, let's compare this with the data from Virtuals and draw a simple conclusion.

Since its launch on October 16, the Virtuals Protocol platform has launched a total of 15,845 AI agents. This is about one-third of the number of projects launched daily on Pump.fun. Last month, the platform launched about 175 agents daily.

I couldn't find the number of agents on the Virtuals platform with a market cap over $10 million on the Dune dashboard, so I manually counted: as of writing this article, there are 35 agents on the Virtuals Protocol platform with a market cap of $10 million or more. Out of the 15,845 launched agents, 35 accounts for a staggering 0.22%! This means 99.78% of Virtuals agents did not break the $10 million market cap threshold.

Now recall the huge and counterintuitive difference between 99.78% and 99.9986% that I mentioned at the beginning. Of course, this is just a rough estimate demonstration.

But I believe you understand: compared to blindly investing in projects on Pump.fun, blindly investing in projects launched on the Virtuals platform has a much greater chance of yielding substantial returns.

However, you definitely won't invest blindly, right?

Now let's draw a real conclusion.

As a Launchpad, Virtuals outperforms other platforms in every aspect. In this example, there are many comparable aspects that have yet to be mentioned. For instance:

• Pump.fun earned $400 million in fees over a year, while Virtuals Protocol earned $55 million in fees in just three months.
• Pump.fun has about 300,000 active users daily, with 8 million unique wallet addresses over the year. In contrast, the number of unique wallet addresses holding Virtual agent tokens is even less than 300,000 (only 280,000).

In summary, Virtuals Protocol has achieved greater accomplishments with fewer resources. There’s no need to compare the current gaps in user activity, trading volume, and total locked value (TVL) between the Solana chain and the Base chain:

Data source: DefiLlama

However, as more and more large holders announce (or have already) shifted to investing in AI agent projects on the Base chain, this gap is narrowing. Even those who initially mocked Base chain projects, like @frankdegods and @notthreadguy, have changed their attitudes.

I recommend everyone pay attention to @jessepollak's announcements about the future development of the Base chain. Their roadmap is impressive, and Coinbase is closely watching as well. The Base chain is committed to achieving better DeFi expansion than other Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVMs) and will soon support multiple fiat currencies on-chain, with Coinbase's stock $COIN and many liquidity pools being tokenized! Many have forgotten that the Base chain is just getting started.

In recent months, funds have continuously flowed into the Base chain.

Last but not least, the token economic model of Virtual. You really should delve into this; it is their true advantage over competitors, and they are pioneers.

The Launchpad function has created the highest quality ecosystem and token economic flywheel. This flywheel brings huge profits to the team, whether from fees or token appreciation, providing ample funds for investment and upgrades (the G.A.M.E and CONVO functions will definitely be optimized in the coming months). Moreover, this flywheel effect benefits every agent token created on the platform.

Recently, the Virtuals team seems to have shifted its focus to the gaming field of AI agents. In my opinion, this is a wise move: it was originally their intention and area of expertise, and it is likely that during this market cycle's fervor phase, the gaming narrative will return. Additionally, they are also laying out narratives compatible with mainstream Web2. After all, non-player characters (NPCs) have vast application space in this field, don't they?

Their platform is ready to deploy on the Solana chain!

My research on the Solana chain over the weekend made me realize that the trading activity and volume there are astonishing, especially since I will be on the Base chain by the end of 2024. At the same time, I was amazed by the advancements in Solana trading tools and the improved trading experience.

But I also found that today's market is more predatory than it was six months ago. Some projects have increasingly complex exit strategies, and seeing a 99% loss makes me helplessly sigh, "Well played." Overall trading activity is leaning more towards extreme speculation. I entered this field in 2017, and at my core, I am a speculator, but I appreciate wise and thoughtful speculative behavior more.

On the Base chain, everything is slower; trading, transfers, token authorizations, and price fluctuations are all so.

However, the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are continuously improving, and related tools are still being developed. Currently, the Base chain is still in its early stages, and its lower popularity means less predation, resembling more of a player versus environment (PvE) scenario rather than player versus player (PvP).

This also means there are many opportunities on the Base chain. Just like the comparison of 99.78% and 99.9986% mentioned earlier, opportunities stand out in this less noisy field. Moreover, the influx of a large amount of idle funds from Ethereum adds to the benefits.

Compared to similar projects on the Solana chain, there are far fewer scammers on the Virtuals platform. Look at last week's AICC debacle, and then compare it to today's DTRXBT project launched by @beastico and @ghost93x; Virtuals includes all community members in a more win-win oriented manner, ordinary investors included.

Virtuals continues to attract serious and reputable real-name developers. Of course, like anywhere else, there are some developers who may cut and run. But listening to @NickPlaysCrypto's interview reveals that, even now, not all new developers are scammers.

I won't make a formal conclusion; the points I want to express are already quite clear. You can draw your own conclusions, and I hope to see you soon on the "battlefield" of Virtuals. In my opinion, this is far from over. For those already involved, the best is yet to come.