The heat of the AI agent market remains unabated, Virtual and AI16Z have become the leaders.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the AI agent market experienced explosive growth, which continued into early 2025. As of early January 2025, the overall market value of the AI agent market had surpassed $16.9 billion, an increase of approximately 22.7% compared to the previous week.

In this blue ocean, two major platforms stand out: Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z. Virtuals Protocol, as the main AI agent issuance platform on the Base chain, has a market capitalization of over $5 billion, ranking among the top 40 cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, in the Solana ecosystem, AI16Z, as a venture capital institution managed by AI agents, has also surpassed a market cap of $2.5 billion. These two protocols have become barometers for observing the AI agent track, each with its own unique development path and characteristics.

Development History

Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Distribution Platform

Virtuals Protocol originated as a gaming guild, established in 2021. After experiencing a downturn in the gaming guild market, the team decided to pivot to a Venture Studio, exploring multiple project directions. In 2023, they fully transitioned to the AI field and launched the platform in February 2024. Despite encountering some setbacks initially, the team achieved several breakthroughs in the AI domain, including the development of the world's first Roblox AI RPG and AI games without game engines. Ultimately, the success of the GOAT project provided an excellent development opportunity for Virtuals Protocol.

AI16Z: From Web 2 AI to Web 3 AI

The founder of ai16z, Shaw, was initially a game developer before transitioning to the AI field. His inspiration came from a project called "AI version degen Spartan," which successfully revived a legendary character and challenged people's stereotypes about AI. Through discussions with industry insiders, Shaw developed the idea of creating AI investors, aimed at building a fully autonomous, trustworthy investment system that serves the community. When ai16z was launched, it set a fundraising goal of 4,420 SOL and sold out in just 20 minutes, demonstrating the strong market interest in this innovative model.

Product Kernel

Virtuals Protocol: AI's iOS

Virtuals Protocol serves as a发行 platform for AI agents, functioning similarly to Pump Fun, but the trading pairs are based on the platform token $VIRTUAL as the trading pool. The platform establishes a common standard for its AI agent tokens, emphasizing precision and careful planning. In terms of token economics, Virtuals Protocol empowers VIRTUAL through its Agent project; the more AI agents use the platform to issue tokens and the more people trade the tokens, the better value capture VIRTUAL will have.

AI16Z & ELIZA: The Android of the AI World

AI16Z is a fund managed autonomously by AI, using a mixed strategy that includes community interaction mechanisms. ElizaOS is an open-source framework for AI agents that allows developers to freely construct, experiment, and launch AI agents. The core features of ELIZA include a role profile system, action system, providers, and evaluators. Unlike Virtuals Protocol, Eliza does not tightly bind the architecture with ecological protocols, and anyone can develop using the Eliza framework, with power being decentralized.

Concept Project Overview

| VIRTUALS Ecosystem | Type | Market Cap | AI16Z/Eliza Ecosystem | Type | Market Cap | |-------------|------|-------|----------------|-----------|-------| | VIRTUAL | Protocol Token | 4.34B | AI16Z | Fund | 2.29B | | AIXBT | Analyst | 594M | ELIZA | Framework | 120M | | GAME | Framework | 253M | DegenAI | Simulated KOL | 80M | | VADER | Fund | 113M | SPORE | Self-Reproduction | 36M | | FREYA | Game | 21M | SNAI | Cloud Server | 83M | | TAOCAT | Self-Evolution | 50M | VAPOR | Launchpad | 91M |

Catalysts Driving Coin Prices

Virtuals Protocol

The business model of Virtuals Protocol is clear, with products closely tied to the price of the tokens. To observe the sustainability of the price increase, one can pay attention to the trading volume of ecological tokens and the number of issued tokens. The platform does not pursue the growth of the number of issued tokens, but hopes to incubate quality projects. In the future, whether it can continue to incubate excellent AI agency projects and whether the overall ecosystem can maintain its market share are key points to observe in the development of Virtuals Protocol.

AI16Z/Eliza

The overall ecosystem of AI16Z is relatively weakly connected, and projects developed using the Eliza architecture do not directly feed back value to AI16Z/Eliza. The strategic model of AI16Z is more like "surrounding the city from the countryside," expanding its influence by being open for everyone to use. Whether the market value of AI16Z can continue to rise in the future depends on how deep, fast, and numerous its collaborations with other protocols are. Recently, AI16Z has collaborated with other well-known framework protocols (such as ARC, FXN), and we look forward to more strong partnerships in the future.

With the continuous warming of the AI agent market, Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z, as two leading players, have adopted different development strategies. Virtuals Protocol focuses on building a complete ecosystem, while AI16Z expands its influence through an open framework. In the future, the competition between these two platforms will further drive innovation and development in the AI agent market.