The post Making sense of the AI agent meta appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. The AI agent frenzy was kickstarted by GOAT. GOAT is a Solana memecoin that spawned from an experiment by creator Andy Ayrey when he pitted two Claude AI models in an endless debate. GOAT still sits today at a comfortable $404 million market cap, but no longer dominates the mindshare it once did. First to copy GOAT’s success was the AI agent Luna (LUNA). It’s a busty anime girl chatbot that streams 24/7 on social media — need I say more? Chat with her, tip her with her own LUNA token (why does anyone do that?), or be like A16z-backed Story Protocol: Hire Luna for social media marketing. The Luna virtual companion was launched on Virtuals Protocol, an “AI Agent launchpad” on Base that is the most recognizable brand name in this meta right now. Formerly the PathDAO gaming guild, Virtuals took pump.fun’s successful formula and applied it to AI agents. Launch an agent token, hit a target market cap on a bonding curve, and pair the agent’s token in a liquidity pool on Uniswap.  What Virtuals did differently, however — and what has gotten investor-types bullish on its token — was tying its native VIRTUALS token to the cost of launching agents and running inferences, as well as pairing it with agent tokens in a Uniswap liquidity pair (rather than SOL). Within the Virtuals ecosystem, Luna faces competition for speculative capital from other similarly looking chatbots like Airene, or more “utility-based” agents like aixbt, an agent that scrapes troves of social media data to surface trading alpha (aixbt is incidentally bullish on everything). Just as agents face competition, so too do the picks-and-shovels of agents. Besides Virtuals, a myriad of AI agent launchpads already exist, such…

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Filed under: News - @ December 30, 2024 6:28 pm