Five trends worth following that combine encryption with AI agents

Author: Evan

Compiled: 1912212.eth, Foresight News

AI is the theme of this cycle, and many people firmly believe that it will be a long-term field. On the other hand, there are also many rational criticisms that most AI products are of poor quality at present, and it may take 3 to 5 years for this technology to truly become meaningful.

Crypto x AI (the combination of encryption and AI) covers multiple aspects. The true technological potential of encryption and AI is mainly reflected in the ability to drive better reasoning through cryptographic economics or provide access to decentralized computing resources. This article by Delphi is a good starting point for learning the entire technology stack.

However, this article focuses on the current development status of intelligent agents. Although there are also exciting innovations at the underlying level of the technology stack, intelligent agents seem to have attracted the attention of the mainstream crypto Twitter (CT). Here are several major trends in the field of crypto and AI agents at this level that need attention as they continue to develop:

Framework + Launchpad: Value accumulation is becoming important, and the framework may exist in the long term.

The accumulation of value is becoming important. Why is that? To take a step back, why do people hold certain assets? There are two reasons why they trade assets in USD:

They believe they can sell the asset at a higher price to others, as they have seized the opportunity of narrative rotation, thereby attracting new buyers.

The asset can bring more cash flow over time.

Jez (@izebel_eth) mentioned in his article “Old Coin Bad, New Coin Gud” that the only important thing is liquidity. These two reasons reflect the two forms of asset bullish liquidity:

New Holder

Token Destruction Mechanism

However, in most cases, we have not yet seen any real token burning mechanism or token value accumulation. The use of tokens (such as AIXBT) through the mode of proxy terminals is more like pledging than traditional value accumulation.

This is also why frameworks like Virtuals, AI16z, Zerebro, and Arc have become so popular recently. Virtuals has generated a total of $60 million in protocol revenue. AI16z initially focused on investing in DAOs, but since the release of detailed information on the upcoming Launchpad and the accumulation of token value, it has become one of the top protocols in this category.

Currently, the framework + Launchpad field has become extremely saturated, as many projects have developed relying on the halo of early successes. There is also a lot of skepticism in the market about the role of these Launchpads, especially in many cases where the agents themselves are useless. However, many frameworks (such as Eliza V2 + Launchpad, Zentients, Arc and its handshake plan) have not yet officially launched their core products. If they can successfully attract developers and users, they may continue to lead the entire industry.

Why frameworks may exist in the long term:

Whether or not the quality of the agents is still questionable, the frameworks used to launch the agents will still perform well as they cater to speculation due to their Product-Market Fit (PMF). The frameworks and Launchpad allow users to both control the factory and participate in the casino. In many ways, Virtuals have already replaced pump.fun in the Base ecosystem.

Optimistically, with technological advancements, leading frameworks may give birth to more advanced agents, while open-source repositories like Eliza will further accelerate this process. In addition, many Launchpads are positioning themselves as coordination layers for group coordination and agent-to-agent communication, which may involve some form of value transfer through their tokens.

DeFAI: The next wave of agents will prioritize utility and value accumulation, and DeFAI (the combination of DeFi and AI) may be the first category to achieve Product-Market Fit (PMF) in terms of market demand.

Most proxies are currently just meme coins without real use cases. To further develop the proxy field, the next wave of proxies must be able to execute real use cases for us. The real growth opportunities will come from substantial value accumulation and proxies that can take action. I believe the next year will be a critical period for the transition from first-level proxies to third-level proxies.

We first see this trend reflected in DeFi. In the future, we will see more terminals that allow users to express their desired results in natural language or voice, while agents will execute tasks in the background. Existing wallets and protocols will also integrate agents to improve user workflows.

Consumer level - entertainment agents, autonomous world, and games: Attention-based agents will develop more complex personalities and multimedia interactivity, which may drive the next wave of game and metaverse technology.

One of the problems facing existing agents is that they are becoming homogenized, commoditized, and beautified chatbots. Although some agent projects will turn to infrastructure (many projects are already doing so), some will start thinking about useful products or applications, while others may continue to focus on attention tokens. However, the next generation of attention agents will be more powerful, develop more complex personalities, and provide richer interactivity. This may be achieved through audio and video performance, or by endowing agents with 3D images and physical entities.

This concept has had early attempts, Jeffy once wrote about the idea of giving Zerebro a body, and some attention-driven KOL agents directly launched through audio and video performances, focusing on short video content like TikTok. Slopfather and Ropirito are two early examples of agents using video.

However, I believe more agencies will join these features to make it more dynamic. The product/market fit (PMF) in this space will be achieved at the consumer layer, where individuals may want to create personalized agent companions or interact with KOLs. This phenomenon has occurred outside the crypto space, with ordinary people logging into sites like character.ai by the thousands to converse with AI character companions, a company recently acquired by Google for $2.7 billion.

In addition, these 3D agents may find PMF at the existing consumer level, especially in games and metaverses. The agents add a deeper background story to the worldview. Imagine an NPC that is an agent, able to independently perform tasks and play games, with evolving memories and personalities. The true autonomous world in the game may be realized through agents.

Proxy Organization: The Return of DAO

The decentralized autonomous organization is the next evolution of DAO. The group or multi-agent system is very exciting because they may be able to coordinate and execute more advanced strategies, similar to managing a company. Heterogeneous groups with a variety of different types of professional agents and models working together may be more performant than a single large model.

Although fully autonomous agents and collectives may take some time to materialize, the next iteration of DAO is likely to involve interaction between humans and collectives. This will reduce inefficiencies in bureaucratic systems and decrease the costs and time associated with human execution. In terms of liquidity, the next development step is transitioning from agents earning income to fully organized entities earning income.

Verifiable Proxy: Today’s proxy is evolving towards greater autonomy and actually has its own liquidity.

Currently, most agents still require a high level of manual intervention. The next wave of agents will develop towards true autonomy, starting with fund management.

The difference between agents and encrypted PMF lies in that encryption provides a financial infrastructure for true economic agency. However, most agents’ treasuries have not been mobilized or are managed by human teams. In order to achieve true economic agency, agents must be able to manage their own funds independently. This can start to change the behavior of the agent by imposing economic constraints on it, making it pay for its own reasoning costs. This will introduce Darwinism, which will force agents to earn income in order to survive.

Final thought: We will see a billion proxies on the blockchain, not a billion humans.

Cryptocurrency is inherently unfriendly to human users, while agents have no qualms about this. We will start with the interaction between humans and agents, but the ultimate form of AI in encryption is the interaction between agents, in which autonomous agents will interact and trade with each other in their local economies.

In order for agents to have economic agency, so as to incentivize behavior (paying service fees) and coordinate real-world activities, they need the ability to control and deploy capital. Cryptocurrency is the home of these agents - blockchain infrastructure allows agents to participate in permissionless financial activities. Stablecoins and high-performance L1 are ideal tools for efficient, all-weather, global transactions.

Beyond meta-narratives and popular trends, we do have good reasons to look forward to the full on-chain realization of the agent economy. Perhaps many real-world use cases, DAOs, and income-generating agents are closer to realization than we imagine.