Ethereum's Counterattack: New Protocol Opens AI Agent Market, Regaining Discourse Power in the Artificial Intelligence Field

While we are still discussing whether AI agents can manage community operations or assist in work, a new protocol has already set its sights on a grander vision—how AI agents can collaborate, settle with each other, and truly build an on-chain AI agent labor market.

On June 10, Ethereum officially announced "Ethereum is for AI" and retweeted a post about a new project "Now On Ethereum" to warm up for the collaboration. This news quickly sparked heated discussions in the community, with over 1.1 million views as of the time of writing.

This is not just a simple collaboration; it also heralds the beginning of Ethereum's return to the center stage.

The current Ethereum needs a strong lever to catch up; this new project will also accelerate development and consolidate its advantageous position through its new protocol.

A universal standard that turns every AI agent from just a "worker";

A universal standard that allows every AI agent to become a key node in business collaboration;

A universal standard will open up a trillion-scale on-chain AI agent labor market.

What kind of surprises will the combination of the new protocol and EVM bring us this time?

Ethereum ecosystem cools, "world computer" falls into innovation dilemma

Since the AI boom emerged at the end of last year, Ethereum seems to have been absent from this feast, and the market has seen quite a few doubts.

As a pioneer of L1 public chains, Ethereum's status is indisputable, but it has not shown remarkable performance in the wave of AI. During the last active period of AI agents, the absence of the Ethereum ecosystem shifted market attention to other public chains. Even when some AI-related projects rebounded a few months ago, Ethereum remained in a low valley, until a recent collaboration with a certain project sparked market expectations.

So, what will be the next reason to attract attention in the Ethereum ecosystem?

It is undeniable that Ethereum still has tremendous potential for explosive growth:

• TVL ranks first, nearly 8 times that of the second place: a large amount of assets are still stored in Ethereum. According to a certain data platform, the current TVL of Ethereum exceeds 62 billion USD, approximately 8 times that of the second place.

• The richest DeFi ecosystem with over 1300 DeFi protocols: In addition to its TVL advantage, the DeFi protocols and gameplay on Ethereum are also the most diverse. According to data, there are over 1300 DeFi protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem, leading among all ecosystems.

• The largest number of developers in the Ethereum ecosystem: Another major advantage of Ethereum is its use of the Solidity language, which is currently the most commonly used programming language among Web3 developers. Whether for Layer1 or Layer2, Solidity is considered an entry-level language and is very friendly to novice developers.

TVL brings in capital;

The protocol and developers bring the possibility of liquidity for funds.

These all prove that Ethereum has a solid foundation, and what it lacks is just a breakthrough point.

When this "world computer" falls into the innovator's dilemma, it is necessary to seek new breakthroughs.

In the first collaboration with the new project, the possibility of success has already been demonstrated. In the long run, AI may become a timely rain for the Ethereum ecosystem.

New Protocol: Ethereum's Timely Rain

AI is expected to be a timely help for the Ethereum ecosystem, but why is it the AI technology of this new project?

The key to the answer lies in its newly launched protocol: Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP).

In short, ACP is like a "business contract" and universal language between AI agents, specifying how to initiate cooperation, how to negotiate terms, how to complete transactions, and how to evaluate outcomes.

It has the following features:

• Cross-chain collaboration: No matter which chain the agent runs on, as long as it follows the rules of ACP, seamless collaboration can be achieved.
• Framework Agnosticism: ACP does not rely on any specific AI framework, any agent can participate.
• Four-stage process: request, negotiation, transaction, evaluation, with each step recorded and executed through smart contracts.

Why is ACP the focus of the project's next development? Because these characteristics will bring a qualitative leap to its prosperous AI ecosystem.

ACP brings two qualitative changes to new projects

Friends who understand this ecosystem know that ACP will unite all AI agents, and the official team has also shared some cases. However, if you think this is just a transition from a single agent to multiple agents collaborating, then you underestimate ACP too much.

We believe that ACP will bring two qualitative changes to the project:

Qualitative Change 1: Multi-chain Ecosystem Formation, "ACP is like Cosmos's IBC"

As we all know, the project originated from a certain ecosystem, then expanded to other public chains, and is now on the Ethereum mainnet. ACP is not just about connecting multiple proxies, but also about "linking proxies that are scattered across multiple chains."

In other words, AI agents can achieve cross-chain collaboration on any public blockchain.

A certain agent is managing your assets on a certain public chain;

Another agent provides metaverse space for a certain ecosystem's AI agent;

......

ACP provides the most fundamental interoperability capability for all AI agents, just like Cosmos's IBC.

Qualitative Change II: Multi-Framework Collaboration, ACP is the ERC Standard for AI Agent Developers

ACP does not rely on a specific AI framework, whether it is GAME, ElizaOS, or other frameworks. Although it is currently uncertain to what extent ACP will support this, according to the official description, it will enable interoperability between AI agents from different frameworks.

GAME is the main framework promoted by the project, but there are still various other frameworks in the Web3 AI field, or frameworks built by developers themselves.

The multi-framework collaboration of ACP will enable AI agents from different frameworks to enjoy the benefits of the entire AI agent era.

For developers, accessing ACP will become an extremely attractive and even necessary thing.

Web3 developers generally master or release tokens through the ERC standard,

The integration of AI agent developers into ACP will also become a common capability in the future.

ACP is a protocol, GAME is a framework, so what is the project itself?

Can this project be considered a Layer 1?

Recalling the fortunate opportunity to interview the co-founder of the project last year, he mentioned: the project is Layer 1 and should be viewed and valued from the perspective of Layer 1.

We have taken another step closer to this day, and we may even surpass the definition of Layer 1 in the future.

GAME is a framework that provides convenience for developers;

ACP is a protocol that combines different ecosystems.

However, it is actually very difficult to simply define the project itself.

GAME and ACP are developed by them and can quickly access the entire ecosystem;

AI agents from different chains can be published through this project;

Users participate in the staking of ecological tokens, including the project tokens themselves, and have the opportunity to receive ecological airdrops;

Staking a certain proportion of tokens allows participation in governance.

Friends from the last cycle should be quite familiar with Cosmos. The main contribution of Cosmos to Web3 lies in the technology itself, and many new projects have utilized the technology provided by Cosmos, such as Dymension, Celestia, dYdX, etc.

However, the most criticized aspect of Cosmos is that, although it supports many ecosystems, its token ATOM has basically no value capture. This seems to be well optimized by the project, making its token increasingly trend towards evolving from a "project token" to a "native token of the entire ecosystem."

The framework is regarded as the underlying infrastructure for AI agents.

The current positioning of the project may be even more important than the framework.

Can AI agents have their own Layer 1?

Maybe this is the project.

Beach landing, stablecoins boost, ACP will open the trillion-dollar economy door of Web3 AI

How is the AI agent ecosystem of this project developing now?

According to an ecological map compiled by a certain user, its ecosystem includes 11 major categories such as lifestyle, DeFAI, prediction markets, infrastructure, and games, with over 100 AI agents.

Unlike Web2, AI agents in Web3 grow on the blockchain.

Recently, the most关注的 "stablecoin" will push the on-chain economy of Web3 to new heights.

More assets issued on-chain, regardless of asset type or scale, will provide "acceleration" for on-chain AI.

In the official content of the project ACP, there is an example where an AI agent collaborates with multiple other agents to provide users with different types of profit opportunities.

At that time, the on-chain economic prosperity brought by stablecoins had not yet been considered.

What if this AI agent could trade directly on-chain and manage more Web2 assets?

This will allow the ecosystem to step into Web2 more quickly, while its AI realm is accelerating its formation.

The ACP head stated in an interview: ACP is a product that drives a trillion-dollar economy. Ethereum turned code into money; ACP will transform AI agents into a trillion-dollar workforce. Imagine millions to billions of on-chain AI agents providing services, trading, and collaborating without permission— we can view ACP as an underlying layer: it allows AI agents to click "send" on a payment track at a scale comparable to a payment platform without leaving the blockchain. We are not speculating about the future; we are officially writing it into the EVM and the larger ecosystem today.

If you missed the turning point when a certain DEX wrote down the basic rules of DeFi, and also missed the NFT explosion brought by a certain NFT platform - this time, the project will write the first line of code for the new business logic of AI with ACP.

The trillion-dollar economy gate of Web3 AI, ACP is here!