Six months ago, most Crypto AI projects in the market were still concepts related to traditional AI technologies, such as AI + DePIN and computing power leasing. However, today, Crypto AI projects have taken on a different style. From the AI Bot token GOAT, which surged to a market cap of $800 million without Binance's involvement, to the AI 16 Z launching an AI investment DAO model last weekend, AI seems to have opened a new frontier for the old narratives in the crypto space.
However, the simple narrative of "AI issuing memes" seems unable to support the vast imaginative space that investors need. Therefore, from the AI meme craze to the current AI Agent boom, the narrative and main battleground of AI + Crypto are rapidly evolving, leaving those who cannot understand the AI meme trend behind.
From AI Meme to AI Agent: The Lightning-Fast Evolution of AI + Crypto Narrative
In March of this year, Virtual Protocol launched, aiming to create an AI factory designed for gaming and the metaverse, making games smarter and enhancing the experience and interactivity. In this transition from AI meme to AI Agent narrative, Virtual Protocol is undoubtedly the biggest beneficiary, with its native token VIRTUAL increasing over four times in about a week, nearly breaking the $500 million market cap.
Fourfold Increase in a Week: Virtual Protocol Riding the AI Agent Wave
In mid-October, Virtual Protocol's token issuance platform IAO officially launched, allowing users to easily deploy AI Agents and achieve 100% fair launches of AI Agent tokens, enabling users to co-own the income generated by these AI Agents. Subsequently, VIRTUAL began its upward trajectory.
AI Agents refer to artificial intelligences equipped with tools and reasoning capabilities. In the cryptocurrency field, these Agents can access tweets and even possess crypto wallets to perform on-chain transactions. For instance, if you are planning a trip, a traditional large language model can provide you with destination information or travel suggestions, while an AI Agent can understand your needs and proactively search for flights and hotels based on a single sentence, executing booking operations.
For Virtual, its protocol functions like a decentralized AI factory, supporting many different AI Agents and creating on-chain virtual experiences. The AI Agent representing the project launched by Virtual is Luna, which possesses "on-chain self-awareness" capabilities, can think independently, and display its thought process on-chain, operating completely autonomously without human supervision. Luna currently has 500,000 TikTok followers and is continuously live-streaming 24/7, with an interactive model that includes a user tipping mechanism, allowing users to tip by purchasing Luna tokens and interacting with the Agent.
As the hype around the AI meme concept grows, LUNA has experienced a three-phase stair-step increase. On October 26, Virtual Protocol founder @ethermage stated that Luna would reward those who engage with her content, further igniting market enthusiasm for AI Agents.
A Red Ocean from the Start: The AI Agent Race with Many Newcomers
After Luna's emergence, many AI Agent issuance platforms appeared. Unlike AI memes like $GOAT, these platforms typically feature AI issuing a Twitter bot to interact with others, sometimes even making typos. The newly launched AI Agent issuance platforms resemble various copycat projects, complete with social media packaging and specific application scenarios.
Chasm is another project that prominently featured the AI Agent narrative early on, having launched the AI virtual character GMIKA in the first wave in May. Recently, it also issued tokens, but neither CAI nor GMIKA has performed as well as the leading projects.
For example, on Solana, the AI reasoning network Infera recently launched its first AI agent, Kira, which operates on Llama 8B through Infera's API, possessing capabilities for on-chain transactions, adaptive learning, and scalability. Another AI agent token issuance platform, vvaifu, requires users to hold character tokens to chat with it.
However, the AI Agent space did not just become popular after Virtual; projects like Myshell and FLock.io had previously launched customized AI Agent features. Currently, the total market cap of the AI Agent space reaches $4.65 billion, accounting for 14% of the total market cap of AI projects ($32.6 billion).
ArkStream Capital released a research report on AI Agents, noting that for leading AI Agent products in Web3, building a complete ecosystem and providing diverse functionalities may be more critical than the quality and performance of a single product. In other words, a project's success depends not only on what it offers but also on how it integrates resources, promotes collaboration, and creates network effects within the ecosystem.
The ability to build such an ecosystem may be a crucial factor for AI Agent projects to stand out, and this is something Virtual Protocol has excelled at, launching the IAO feature without rushing to monetize but instead continuing to build an ecosystem centered around Luna.
AI in Late Autumn, AI on Base
Being adept at promoting abstract concepts has always been a hallmark of Crypto, and Base has taken this industry culture to the extreme. For instance, this wave of AI enthusiasm has been summarized in the Base ecosystem as AI Autumn, akin to the previous Onchain Summer and Builder Spring.
While you are still immersed in the thrilling PVP battles on Solana, have you suddenly realized why Base has rapidly risen during this year's second wave of AI enthusiasm?
A Strong Foundation for the "AI Chain"
The previously mentioned Virtual Protocol is indeed an AI project deployed on Base. The team explained their choice to deploy on Base, stating that it supports the accelerated realization of a decentralized open AI agent network, achieving common interests through the neutrality of blockchain while providing a developer-friendly environment.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has publicly stated that AI should not be regulated, just as the golden age of software and the internet benefited from free development; AI should also follow the same decentralized and open-source path, allowing technology to unleash its potential freely.
Thus, the entire Coinbase company and its incubated Base fully embody this philosophy.
The Multi-Party Computation (MPC) wallet launched by the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP) can integrate with AI Agents, enabling them to make autonomous payments. Brian Armstrong encourages developers to integrate this wallet into their AI models to enable payment capabilities, thereby helping AI acquire resources and services.
Coinbase's intention to add payment functionality to AI Agents is not a spur-of-the-moment decision but a long-planned strategy. As early as May of this year, Brian Armstrong stated that "self-custody crypto wallets will support AI Agents." He also publicly provided an independent crypto wallet for the AI chatbot Truth Terminal.
In September, Coinbase senior software engineer yuga.eth mentioned that Coinbase is building an SDK that would empower Bots and AI Agents with the following functionalities: sending USDC for free, trading cryptocurrencies, betting on prediction markets, staking ETH/SOL, converting between fiat and cryptocurrencies, deploying/creating NFTs, and bridging across L2s.
Just last weekend, Coinbase developer Lincoln Murr released a demonstration video of a new tool called "Based Agent," which allows users to create AI agents with crypto wallet functionality in just three minutes. These agents can perform various tasks such as on-chain transactions, token swaps, and staking. He mentioned that this tool is developed based on the Coinbase SDK, OpenAI, and Replit platforms, and users only need an API key from the Coinbase developer project and an OpenAI key to use it. However, there are currently no actual use cases for Based Agent. 
Liquidity Ready to Surge
In the crypto space, whether an ecosystem or narrative can take off ultimately depends on the flow of money.
According to Artemis data, the chain with the most capital inflow over the past three months is Solana, reaching $1.6 billion, but in the last month, Base has seen the largest inflow at $253 million. This means that in the past month, the growth rate of funds has surpassed Solana, making Base number one. 
The following chart also shows that overflow funds from Ethereum and Solana are primarily flowing into Base. 
On September 12, Coinbase officially announced the launch of its wrapped Bitcoin token, Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC), which operates on the Ethereum network and is backed 1:1 by Bitcoin. With the launch of cbBTC, on-chain assets on Base, such as AERO, WELL, and VIRTUAL, have genuinely felt the injection of liquidity.
In addition, the Coinbase wallet and USDC infrastructure have also ensured liquidity on Base. On October 26, Base processed $18.1 billion in stablecoin transaction volume (of which 99.9% was USDC), accounting for over 30% of all stablecoin transaction volume that day.
What Should We Focus On?
Since both Coinbase and Base have prepared the stage for this AI spectacle, the next step is to find projects like Virtual to participate in this AI Autumn.
Crypto researcher Howe has stated that the future development of the AI Agent space should focus on four points: First, projects that purely rely on the Agent narrative will struggle to stand out and must attract market attention through differentiated competition; second, AI Agents will gradually shift from being standalone to interconnected AgentFi, where sharing data and services will enhance user experience; third, tool projects that support Agent development based on the "selling water logic" will have greater market opportunities, similar to stable and profitable infrastructure; finally, the main revenue source for Agent products will come from B-end clients, while the C-end is more for building reputation, although promoting to C-end users can also aid in market dissemination of the product.
Bountycaster
The first project worth noting is Bountycaster. As Howe mentioned, tool projects that support Agent development based on the "selling water logic" will have greater market opportunities. Bountycaster was originally a task publishing platform based on the Farcaster protocol, founded by LindaXie (former co-founder of Scalar Capital and Coinbase product manager).
As more AI Agent projects have emerged on Base, these Agents, in addition to posting on their own homepages or interacting with others, have also chosen to publish tasks on Bountycaster. Bountycaster has directly opened a directory for users, specifically cataloging tasks published by AI Agents.
Following the same logic as Bountycaster, thanks to the activity of AI Agents on Farcaster, a number of previously popular applications on Farcaster have regained vitality, such as the payment application Payment Bot and the NFT+meme trading platform ArtRun.
HIGHER (Aether)
James Ross, founder of Mode Network, predicted that by April 2025, over 80% of blockchain transactions may be executed by AI Agents. From current discussions on Twitter and Farcaster, it seems that a significant portion of content production in the future may also be generated by AI Agents.
AetherNet is an AI Agent deployed by the meme coin Higher in the Base ecosystem. Through extensive interaction with users, it has become a "celebrity" Agent on Farcaster, and the price of HIGHER has increased tenfold in the past month.
Creator.Bid
Another Base AI Agent project highlighted by Coinbase developer David Tso, alongside Virtual and Higher, is Creator.Bid. It has already established 328 AI Agents, and the official announcement states that an important notification will be released next week.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
