AI Agent Track Explodes: A Look at the Hottest AI Agent Related Projects Right Now

Jessy, Gold Finance

The combination of AI Agents and blockchain, along with the wealth effect brought about by various AI Agent memes, has undoubtedly become a main narrative of this bull market. The year 2024 can also be said to be a year of explosive growth for the AI Agent sector.

At the beginning of 2025, according to data from CoinGecko, the overall market capitalization of AI Agent’s tokens has exceeded $16 billion. This sector saw a significant surge in overall market capitalization in 2024, with the main contributors being the AI Agent launch platform Virturls ecosystem-related tokens on the Base chain, as well as tokens related to the centralized trading fund AI16Z Dao. According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, these two ecosystems account for over 50% of the total ecosystem.

Currently, various AI Agent projects are competing fiercely, and although there are relatively few projects that can be implemented in reality, the continuous emergence of innovations is also driving this sector forward step by step.

The development of AI Agents has gone through a process from the initial Meme tokens, then moving towards asset issuance platforms, and finally to specific on-chain applications of AI Agents.

2024 AI Agent Development Timeline

1 3 Month: The Truth Terminal chatbot was successfully developed and released on X, attracting attention for its witty responses. This chatbot integrates a cryptocurrency wallet.

July 2: Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen donated $50,000 worth of Bitcoin to Truth Terminal, attracting significant attention.

March 3: Coinbase announced the completion of the first cryptocurrency transaction between AI robots. In this transaction, one AI robot purchased AI Tokens from another AI robot using cryptocurrency.

October 4: The first AI Agent token GOAT appears, which is the token of the Truth Terminal project. The explosive popularity of GOAT has quickly made AI Agent Meme coins a new hotspot in the market, with numerous AI Agent-related applications springing up like mushrooms after rain, and hundreds of new AI Agent tokens being launched every day.

November 5: ACT token listed on Binance, surged 422.54% within 1 hour, market cap rose from 20 million USD to 240 million USD, increased over 10 times in 10 minutes.

6 12 Month: According to GitHub data, the autonomous agent framework Eliza developed by the ai16z team ranked first in the GitHub December trends chart, with an addition of 4531 stars this month, totaling 7015 stars. The core engineering team of Eliza is preparing to start the new Eliza framework v2 upgrade.

December 7:** The market value of the VIRTUAL token of the Virtual Protocol protocol launched on the Base chain AI Agent has surpassed 3 billion dollars.

Current Characteristics of AI Agent Project Development

In the year 2024, the development of AI Agent projects on the blockchain has shown several characteristics. First, the related Meme hype has ignited a surge of attention for this sector. The emergence of AI agent launch platforms has also led to a rapid explosion of related projects, with some practical AI Agents beginning to surface. However, overall, the innovation in the AI Agent sector is still mainly concentrated on asset issuance and related Meme tokens.

Different AI Agent projects focus on different sectors. For example, Virtuals Protocol focuses on the gaming and entertainment fields by launching AI Agents that provide intelligent interaction and asset management functions for virtual idols, game characters, and more; while Griffa.in emphasizes DeFi automation and research-driven AI applications, helping users with asset management, data analysis, content creation, and so on.

Related innovations are continuously emerging, such as the latest Spore.fun and aiPool, which utilize Phala Network’s TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology to issue tokens. This avoids the “runaway” and “insider” issues found in traditional presale models, creating a fair, transparent, and decentralized presale mechanism.

Currently Popular AI Agent Related Projects

AI16ZA Dao and Eliza

AI16ZA Dao and Eliza, two sides of the same product. First, AI16ZA Dao, which is a decentralized AI trading fund based on the Solana blockchain, also known as “AI Investment DAO.” Its core is to utilize AI agents to acquire market information, analyze community consensus both on-chain and off-chain, and automatically conduct token trading. By tokenizing operations, it combines AI trading strategies with decentralized governance to provide investors with more transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. It mimics Marc Andreessen, co-founder of A16Z, by managing fund assets through data analysis, formulating investment strategies, and autonomously executing trading decisions. Its token symbol is AI16Z, which is the governance token of AI16Z DAO, used for participating in project governance and decision-making, while also representing the holder’s rights within the fund.

Eliza is an open-source modular architecture developed by Shaw, the founder of AI16ZA Dao, primarily used to create AI Agents that can seamlessly interact with users and blockchain systems.

AI16Z relies on this framework for its design, and AI16Z itself has become a representative project of the AI Agent framework. It incorporates an innovative incentive mechanism where 5%-10% of the revenue from all projects developed on the Eliza framework will be allocated to the AI16Z DAO fund. This has attracted more developers to participate in the development of projects based on this framework. In other words, the more AI agent projects developed using the Eliza framework, the better the ecosystem of AI agent projects will develop, and the greater the value that AI16Z can capture. Conversely, the opposite is also true.

In summary, the core of Ai16z is the Eliza framework. With this framework, there is an opportunity to gain benefits from the development of AI Agent projects, and with these benefits, AI16z also has a foundation of value.

Currently, projects related to A I 16z Dao are undoubtedly the hottest contenders in the Ai Agent space. According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the ecological market value of ai16z has reached 1.63 billion dollars, capturing 56.8% of the AI Agent market share alongside Virtuals, making it one of the two dominant projects in the AI Agent market.

Virtuals Protocol

Virtuals Protocol is an AI Agent issuance platform aimed at gaming and entertainment launched on Base. Its main product functionality serves as a launchpad for AI Agents, allowing anyone to easily deploy AI Agents.

The project has designed an economic model where creating an AI Agent requires staking the token VIRTUAL. Users need to spend VIRTUAL tokens to purchase new AI Agent tokens. Therefore, as more AI Agents are issued on Virtuals, the demand for VIRTUAL tokens will increase, naturally creating a positive growth flywheel effect.

As of December 2024, there are already tens of thousands of AI agents generated on it, and the market value of VIRTUAL-related ecological projects continues to rise, currently reaching nearly 4 billion dollars.

Spore.fun

This is an AI Agent self-replication and evolution platform combined with the ai16z Eliza framework. In simple terms, the project aims to achieve autonomous reproduction and evolution of AI. This project simulates natural selection, allowing AI agents to reproduce, mutate, and evolve without human intervention.

What is interesting about this platform is that the projects it launches can automatically replicate when certain conditions are met. To put it in simpler terms, Spore is an AI that automatically generates master plates and will multiply after a certain period, creating sub-plate AIs.

The AI Agent on it needs to meet certain conditions to obtain the right to “reproduce”—after its tokens reach a certain market valuation (such as $500,000). This is not only a survival strategy but also maintains the prosperous development of the ecosystem.

The project has currently created two second-generation tokens, namely Adam $ADAM and Eve $EVE. These are airdropped to the holders of the token SPORE as part of the Spore.fun project direction. The project team stated that these two tokens represent the paternal and maternal AI characters of the Spore.fun platform. Three third-generation tokens have also been produced, and two fifth-generation tokens have been created.

The biggest innovation of this project may be the desire for AI Agents to reproduce, mutate, and evolve without human intervention, becoming more intelligent and diverse with each generation.

The technical innovation of this project may lie in the use of Phala Network’s TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technology to issue tokens, which avoids the “runaway” and “insider” issues found in traditional presale models, creating a fair, transparent, and decentralized presale mechanism.

aiPool

Developed based on the AI16z Eliza framework, it is a system where an AI autonomously issues tokens. In simple terms, it means that everyone sends money to the AI Agent’s address, and the AI Agent issues tokens independently. This project aims to solve issues such as MEME coins running away, insider problems, and bots preemptively taking advantage.

The overall engineering implementation of aipool is not complex. Users send SOL (non-CA address) to the wallet address of the AI Agent, which generates a private key in the TEE environment and pre-sets access rights to manage the Pool. Once certain conditions are met, the AI will automatically create a liquidity pool on the on-chain DEX and distribute tokens to eligible participants, while the collected transaction fees are aggregated into the AI wallet.

The whole process is no different from the previously popular KOL funding FI, except that this round of funding FI is driven by AI Agents. The AI Agent independently controls the private key address (cannot run away), creates a trading pool autonomously (sets a whitelist, funds are unlocked in batches, initial price setting, pricing using oracle, etc.) to reduce the impact of MEV arbitrage.

Technically, it uses the PhalaNetwork TEE technology solution, which allows AI to autonomously generate private keys.

Aixbt

An AI Agent Meme project created through the Virtuals Protocol. This project aims to provide users with accurate market trend predictions and sentiment analysis by analyzing the hot spots and trends in the cryptocurrency market through artificial intelligence, helping users quickly seize market changes and potential investment opportunities.

It integrates real-time data from over 400 KOLs and social media, and uses its proprietary engine to deeply mine and analyze this data, thereby extracting valuable market information and trend predictions for investors. This token belongs to the AI Meme sector, and its market value has now exceeded 600 million USD.

Griffain

An AI Agent search engine project based on the Solana blockchain, which has been selected for the third phase of the Binance Alpha project.

The project is currently accessible by invitation only, requiring an early access pass or Genesis token. Users can create a personal AI Agent in Griffain, which is divided into two types: personal agents and special agents, supporting command modifications and on-chain operations. The agent network allows users to manage tasks and access Griffain’s agent network, while providing a built-in wallet feature to simplify transaction operations.

It is worth mentioning that the Blinks ecosystem on Solana, an innovative tool launched by Solana, allows users to share blockchain links across different social platforms such as Twitter and Telegram, enabling users to complete blockchain transactions directly on social media platforms.

In the Blinks ecosystem, Griffain serves as an artificial intelligence agent engine that can provide intelligent support for various applications and operations within the Blinks ecosystem. For example, in on-chain operations of Blinks, Griffain can assist users in more conveniently understanding and executing complex operational instructions through technologies such as natural language processing, achieving a more intelligent user experience.

Blinks provides a broader application scenario and user base for Griffain. Through the social sharing and convenient operation features of Blinks, Griffain’s applications can more easily reach ordinary users, thereby expanding their application scope in various fields, such as achieving more intelligent interactions and experiences in social interactions, gaming, and entertainment.

It is precisely because it is embedded in the Blinks ecosystem that Griffain has real application scenarios, which is different from some AI Agent projects that are just hype.

Spectral

The project was established long before the currently hottest AI Agent projects; it was founded in 2020 and launched its machine intelligence network in 2023.

The project aims to transform the blockchain industry by converting natural language into Solidity code, enabling the creation of smart contracts, NFTs, and more. It is committed to building a Web3 on-chain agent machine intelligence network that utilizes cutting-edge AI and ML technologies to lower the barriers to writing, adjusting, and deploying smart contracts, thereby promoting the deep integration of on-chain autonomous agents and the Web3 ecosystem.

The project mainly has three products, the first being Spectral Syntax, which is a platform designed to address the limitations of centralized AI models. It allows users to create blockchain-based AI agents using large language models (LLMs) optimized for Solidity code. Through a conversational interface, users can build and explore custom on-chain agents capable of autonomously performing tasks such as trading, transaction processing, and interacting with smart contracts with minimal supervision.

The second product is Spectral Nova, a machine intelligence network designed to provide high-quality decentralized reasoning feedback for smart contracts. Through ecological incentive initiatives, it encourages top data scientists and machine learning engineers to build models that output reasoning feedback, helping smart contracts make decisions without human intervention, and all inferences can be ensured for correctness and security via zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable computation techniques, thereby enhancing the service quality of Web3 applications.

The third product is Inferchain, which serves as the bridge connecting Spectral Syntax and Spectral Nova. As an L2 customized by Spectral for Web3 development, it integrates with AI in a trustless and verifiable manner, ensuring smooth transmission of data and commands, maintaining transparency and decentralization across the entire network, and facilitating safer and more efficient interactions among various on-chain agents.

Existing Issues and Future

Looking at the above several typical AI Agent projects, we can find that the biggest problem currently existing in this track may be the inevitable Meme attribute. In the short term, from the perspective of asset issuance narrative, the most intuitive feeling about AI Agents is still MEME.

The explosive popularity of the AI Agent track began with the surge of the Meme token Goat, and then the subsequent rise of Virtuals, which, although it is an AI Agent launch platform, is essentially a Meme launch platform similar to Pump.fun.

Messari’s latest report points out that the current development of AI Agent projects in the blockchain industry has not yet proven its product adaptability to support market speculation. Currently, AI Agents lack both demand and a clear user base, and their launch depends on market speculation. However, when the market realizes that they will remain mere toys in the foreseeable future, this speculation cycle will collapse. In summary, it predicts that the AI Agent sector will struggle to recover after peaking in market value in the first quarter of 2025.

The combination of blockchain and AI Agents must ultimately land in specific applications, not just financial speculation. To achieve this original intention, we must return to the essence of the combination of blockchain and AI: What does the development of AI Agents need from blockchain? What can AI Agents bring to blockchain?

For AI Agents, blockchain is a direction for achieving “autonomous payments and transactions.” At the current stage, blockchain has the characteristic of lower barriers to entry, which can reduce friction costs similar to traditional finance, such as account opening and intermediaries. Moreover, on-chain transactions can realize real-time trading and improve transaction efficiency. The combination of AI Agents and blockchain also gives many blockchain projects themselves a more intelligent aspect.

Currently, the AI Agent projects in the blockchain field that we see being implemented are mainly focused on providing blockchain services with AI Agents, and there are very few projects that can actually be put into practice.

However, in the recent outlook on the trends of the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 released by several institutions, a16z, VanEck, Bitwise, Hashed, Blockworks, Messari, and Framework all pointed out that AI Agent-related products are expected to experience explosive growth in 2025.

We are optimistic about the development of the industry and look forward to more viable related projects emerging after the bubble bursts in 2025.