Attention is value, AI Agent will continue to attract users and capital

Author: TRACE

Compiled by TechFlow

The rise of AI agents is showing an explosive trend. New agents are launched every week, usually to promote specific TOKENs. In these early stages, they look like a new Memecoin: just as you can launch a coin like $GOAT and attract fans to spread the MEME by building an AI agent. So, how will this trend evolve in the future? An important change is that these agents will gradually shift from promoting random Memecoins to promoting themselves. In other words, these agents will have their own TOKEN, and as the influence of the agent increases, its value will also rise. These ‘ownable agents’ may become a significant breakthrough in this cycle, similar to the previous cycle’s Non-fungible Tokens or Decentralized Finance.

In the past, I was skeptical about AI agents. Because I was unsure whether their market timing was mature, or whether we had attracted enough talent. Here’s why I changed my mind:

Distribution capability: AI agents like @truth_terminal and @luna_virtuals have proven to be powerful enough today to establish effective distribution channels.

Ease of creation: Developers can use a simple and easy-to-use API to build intelligent agents on existing large language models; they no longer need to be experts. Projects like @vvaifudotfun are developing low-code/no-code interfaces, allowing anyone to build intelligent agents.

Meme Coin Effect: The issuance model of Meme Coin Token demonstrates a successful form for launching and spreading AI intelligent agent coins. In the initial stage, these intelligent agents do not need to perform economic activities that directly create value for their Tokens; they just need to attract attention like Meme Coin.

Vision for Development: However, in order to truly grow, AI intelligences cannot be limited to just promoting memes; the market needs a clear vision and development roadmap to showcase the potential future directions of these intelligences. In other words, these projects need to inform the market that while they are currently promoting their own memes, in the future they may develop into traders, software engineers, or artists, ultimately worth billions of dollars. As their initial development is partly reflected in their distribution capabilities, as they become more popular, they actually become more valuable.

Let me elaborate on the last point. To catalyze the adoption cycle of the entire cryptocurrency, there must be a grand story that can penetrate the mainstream market and attract new users and capital. This story needs to be both credible and inspiring.

AI agents meet this requirement perfectly. These agents are not only novel, but also gaining recognition from the traditional tech industry. Now, AI agent companies are founded by world-class founders and backed by some top venture capital firms (e.g. @agency). However, many investors are unable to invest directly in these companies - they cannot even purchase companies with ten years of history like Stripe or SpaceX - so they will gain access through Crypto Assets.

To some extent, this is similar to the metaverse concept of the previous cycle. Although those projects exaggerated themselves, they demonstrated a grand vision to the market through some events unrelated to cryptocurrency, such as the rise of remote work during the epidemic and Facebook renaming itself as Meta.

Although many projects may seem hollow, some of them may bring revolutionary changes. AI agents are becoming more intelligent, and with the expansion of the encryption market, excellent AI developers with the ability to build economically productive agents may realize that tokenizing their agents is a promising business strategy. Tokenized agents can provide them with faster Liquidity, higher valuation, and more convenient distribution channels than traditional SaaS companies.

In the short term, the most important thing in the field of AI intelligence agents is to continue to expand distribution channels. I am optimistic about their ability to do this for three reasons:

Proof of Existence: We have seen from cases like Truth Terminal that intelligent beings can establish evidence on a large scale. I expect to see more similar successful cases emerging.

Incentive Mechanism: If the market experiences a speculative frenzy for AI intelligent agents, then seeking and following these agents may bring substantial profits. The gold rush in the Crypto Assets field will help drive their distribution.

Iterative improvement: Building a more engaging AI agent will be an iterative process. For example, as mentioned in the zerebro White Paper, this agent optimizes content creation by monitoring engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, etc., in order to enhance user interaction. This iteration will not only occur at the model level, but also continuously evolve at the market level, with the goal of creating increasingly appealing content.

If we accept the theory that “attention is value”, then as the ability of intelligent agents to attract attention increases, their value will also increase.

Currently, everything is still in the very early stages, and the future development is full of uncertainties—the future intelligent agents may be completely different from the current ones. But what can be certain is that AI intelligent agents already have the support of the market and technology, and are expected to become the next important category of encryption assets.