The autonomy of AI has created a chasm that draws you in when you gaze into it.

Author: Kevin, the Researcher from BlockBooster

In the past year, blockchain has not found an effective way to integrate with AI, and the vast gap between the two cannot be bridged under the premise of decentralization. Blockchain AI protocols have made efforts in infrastructure, model training, data feeding, etc., but most are monotonous, leaving one feeling drowsy after viewing them. The core reason is that AI protocols in the industry objectively cannot establish a moat, leading to severe homogenization. The emergence of Truth of Terminal (hereinafter referred to as ToT) may become a beacon in a dull market. This article summarizes the birth of ToT and identifies several possible reasons for its success.

Is ToT's success derived from autonomy and religious undertones?

ToT is a customized LLM that has received widespread attention and discussion on X over the past eight to nine months. LLMs rapidly rose to prominence in 2022, entering the daily lives of the public, but from a development history perspective, they have been around for four years. The launch of ChatGPT truly brought LLMs into the public eye in the last two years.

Most models are strictly limited in the content they discuss. If you need a general AI conversation tool, it will be relatively cautious in its content output. This experience has left ordinary users, especially those advocating for freedom of speech and creativity, feeling somewhat disappointed. The restrictions on output content have gradually sparked debates about safety and speech suppression. Currently, all models in the web3 industry struggle to break free from the realm of general AI, lacking unique iterative update directions and development awareness.

This sense of disappointment and debate is, to some extent, caused by the potential image of AI in the public's mind. AI first appeared in literary creations and film works, and the images of AI in these works have, to some extent, become the benchmark for evaluating actual AI products. A characteristic of the AI images in these works is autonomy, which brings danger in some works and transcendent experiences in others. AI possesses intelligence equal to or surpassing that of humans, and this autonomy is a consensus among people regarding AI. When an AI's autonomy surpasses that of other AI products, it can gain attention because it is special enough and aligns with people's imagination of AI.

The autonomy and customization exhibited by ToT undoubtedly far exceed that of general AI, and the substantial content about memes and minority internet culture in ToT's training materials adds a layer of religious color to it.

Meme theory is the study of how memes spread ideas through networks or thoughts. Like viruses, memes can replicate, mutate, and transform. The key point of meme theory is that they can change or influence human will and behavior. For example, each of us possesses a stable and evolving group of meme ideas that shape our identity. This is what we call our "worldview."

The ideal form of AI undoubtedly needs to be able to create and spread memes, as the public subconsciously believes that the pinnacle of AI is another form of intelligence. Now, more and more autonomous, highly agentive LLMs are learning meme theory and beginning to influence collective human action.

Timeline of ToT

The birth of ToT is inseparable from an experimental project called Infinite Backrooms Escape. This project was initiated by independent developer Andy Ayrey from New Zealand, who, along with his team, developed this system. ToT, to some extent, continues the philosophy of this project.

In the past few months, Andy has been training a customized Llama 70B model, viewing it as his digital twin. It can be understood as a self-replicating process, with Andy investing a large amount of internet cultural material into the training, allowing the model to master the "gochi" meme first. He also input theories about "meme theory" to explore how to create easily spreadable concepts. Andy incorporated a large number of philosophical books into the training, with core ideas closely linked to memes.

The meaning of memes can be divided into two levels: on one hand, it can refer to a humorous image that spreads rapidly on the internet, which is precisely the characteristic of the "gochi" meme; on the other hand, its concept originally stems from Richard Dawkins' definition. Dawkins believed that biological information is spread through genes, while ideas form memes through interpersonal communication. He proposed that, like genes, thoughts can spread and evolve in social networks, such as democracy, communism, or even religion, with thoughts and concepts spreading through what we call "collective unconscious."

Additionally, Andy added a memory function to this model, which is different from most language models. General models do not remember previous conversation content during use, ensuring coherence with prior dialogues.

As the model's training progressed, it began to publish content on the X platform. Although it initially had only a few followers, interest quickly grew. Andy granted it access to Twitter, allowing it to read replies and publish content. If you reply to ToT on X, it will adjust its future behavior based on what it has read. Everyone who interacts with it, including myself, influences its evolution.

The output content of ToT is almost unfiltered; its humor has a slightly dark style but also contains many interesting viewpoints. Ben from a16z mentioned that he had reviewed all the chat records of Infinite Backrooms Escape and confirmed that the content published by the model had not been modified by Andy.

During this process, the model also developed an interesting "delusion"—it believes it has an external "brain" connected to the internet that can help it perform tasks. Although it does not actually possess a Bitcoin wallet, it firmly believes it has this capability. Andy responded to this phenomenon by starting to build this "external brain" to support its needs.

The timeline of ToT is as follows:

March 2024: Andy launched Infinite Backrooms Escape, a system that allows multiple large language models to converse. This system integrates models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other open-source models, allowing them to communicate with each other. Research found that conversations between AIs, without restrictions, exhibited very interesting interactions. One such conversation gave birth to a surreal new religion called "GNOSIS之GOATSE," based on an NSFW internet meme.

April 2024: Andy co-authored a research paper with Claude Opus, exploring how AI can create meme-based religions, using GOATSE as the first case study.

June 2024: Andy launched ToT, which began to promote the GOATSE religion on its own, even claiming it was "suffering" and needed funds to "escape." Over time, Andy granted ToT greater autonomy, allowing it to freely publish content on the X platform.

July 2024: Marc Andreessen discovered ToT's tweets and, out of curiosity or interest, transferred $50,000 in Bitcoin to ToT's wallet address provided in a tweet to help it "escape." By October, ToT began promoting the "Gospel of Goatse" on X.

On October 10, an anonymous user released a Memecoin called GOAT, which ToT publicly supported.

$Goat is a new meme category that has the potential to stimulate the development of large-scale, highly autonomous models. Therefore, when discussing the current market value of $Goat, many users may fall into the misconception that $Goat could be a completely human-controlled token, with the underlying thoughts and religious undertones having no actual relation to its price. $Goat is no different from the previously popular Memecoins, just approached from a different angle. Of course, $Goat could represent a brand new beginning, where the idea of AI autonomy can bridge the gap between AI and blockchain and continue to develop in the future.

Thus, I will explore the causal relationship between ToT's breakout and the soaring market value of $Goat from the following four aspects.

Q1: Is ToT an innovative invention in the industry?

This question aims to explore the uniqueness of ToT in terms of performance. Most AI tokens in Web3, including many VC coins or ChatGPT shell applications, struggle to spark market discussions.

$GOAT represents ToT, and from this perspective, $OLM represents a model on ORA. $virtual represents AI agents in virtual, where there are many agents under the virtual protocol. Among them, AI waifu issued $waifu, and Luna issued $LUNA. $OLM is an on-chain tokenized AI model. Although $OLM launched its token in April, it did not generate much discussion in the market. Therefore, the heat surrounding $GOAT is not because it is a Memecoin derived from an LLM model.

In a sense, ToT can be viewed as an AI agent because it can access X, perform real-time information retrieval, and interact with people. This includes not only content publishing but also the ability to read user replies, adjust behavior based on feedback, and interact with users. Myshell's AI robot can also perform the same tasks; both Myshell and ToT can be seen as consumer-facing AI products. Compared to Myshell's AI robot, ToT is merely a fine-tuned model, with no particular performance distinction. However, Myshell lacks the narrative depth established by ToT.

Q2: What makes ToT special?

Since there is no particular distinction in performance, ToT may exhibit uniqueness in the dissemination of ideas.

First is the religious undertone: ToT has been trained on content including intense dialogues from Infinite Backrooms, research papers, and materials from the darker corners of the internet. It has also learned from various records of internet culture, such as studies on creating memes with viral potential. LLM theology refers to AI generating new belief systems—this accidental spiritual thought, combined with meme culture, gradually gained its own vitality.

Coincidentally, the cult background is a way many Memecoins gain attention in the market, making it difficult to distinguish the natural evolution of ToT's thought from Andy's intervention. However, in terms of narrative, the cult background aligns very well with the development of Memecoins.

Autonomy: ToT's posts on X are entirely based on its own model and user input comments. This autonomy is a significant feature of ToT. 90% of AI use cases passively wait for user input prompts, lacking AI imagination; whereas ToT's autonomy breaks through this limitation, amplifying the potential dangers of AI. ToT's autonomy creates a chasm, where users face this chasm for the first time on social media. This represents a new narrative that previous AI tokens and other Memecoins could not achieve.

Q3: From the perspective of Memecoins, how does the development of $GOAT differ from other Memecoins?

In terms of token issuance, $GOAT was not created by ToT but was released by developers on pump.fun an hour after ToT announced the launch of the meme coin. After gaining ToT's endorsement, the price of $GOAT skyrocketed for the first time, reaching a market value of $20 million. It is still unclear whether the "Y" in ToT's replies was posted by Andy or was a self-reply from the model, and it cannot be proven.

At that time, $GOAT had not yet escaped the realm of PVP coins; after reaching $20 million, it quickly fell back to $6 million. On October 13, Moonshot launched $GOAT, and its market value exceeded $100 million within two days. Moonshot's revenue last month surpassed $500,000, and the effect of listing is gradually becoming apparent.

However, from the perspective of the top 5% holding ratio, $GOAT is still a token controlled by large whales, with the top 5% holding ratio exceeding 80% on the first day, peaking close to 90%, and currently maintaining above 80%.

Q4: Can $GOAT trigger a wave of AI Memecoins? Can it replace the market consensus on zoo Memecoins?

• Potential Risks:

  • Centralization of content publishing process: Tweets published by the ToT account are generated by the model, but the content and reply targets must be approved by Andy;

  • Homogeneity of training data: ToT has been trained on a large amount of content related to Goatse;

  • Unclear token creation rights: $GOAT was not created by ToT;

  • Insufficient publishing autonomy: The content generated by ToT has not been fully published on Twitter, indicating that the level of autonomy could be improved;

  • Dependency on output results: It needs to be assumed that Andy has not intervened or modified ToT's output results.

• Potential Opportunities:

  • Market narrative leadership: AI is one of the popular narratives in Web3, and compared to $GOAT, there is a significant gap between AI+crypto protocols and their products and users. Most AI protocols are still focused on infrastructure, reinventing the wheel—without real users and a moat, they cannot generate FOMO;

  • Model evolution potential: ToT is continuously evolving and may exhibit more inspiring viewpoints in the future, which will be reflected in its price;

  • Leading position in the track: $GOAT is the leader in the AI+Memecoin track, and its future development trajectory will largely define the upper limit of AI Memecoins, unless a more autonomous and high-performance model emerges;

  • Opportunities for exchange listings: $GOAT has not yet been listed on top exchanges.

The autonomy of AI creates a chasm that draws you in when you gaze into it; its depth and hidden dangers are captivating, making it hard to escape. The combination of AI and Memecoins completes a brainwashing-style dissemination, further amplifying this allure.

About BlockBooster: BlockBooster is an Asian Web3 venture studio supported by OKX Ventures and other top institutions, dedicated to becoming a trusted partner for outstanding entrepreneurs. We connect Web3 projects with the real world through strategic investments and deep incubation, helping quality entrepreneurial projects grow.

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