The AI Agent market continues to heat up, Virtual and AI16Z showcase their talents.

At the beginning of 2025, the AI Agent market remains hot, with a total market value surpassing $16.9 billion, an increase of 22.7% compared to the previous week. In this thriving field, Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z stand out with their unique advantages, becoming leaders in the industry.

As the main AI Agent issuance platform on the Base chain, Virtuals Protocol's platform token VIRTUAL has a market capitalization exceeding $5 billion, placing it 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 capitalization of $2.5 billion. These two protocols have become benchmarks for observing the AI Agent sector, and their respective development routes and characteristics are worth exploring in depth.

Development History

Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Issuing Platform

The predecessor of Virtuals Protocol is the gaming guild PathDAO, established in 2021. After experiencing a downturn in the gaming guild market, the team decisively transformed and fully committed to the AI field. They have made several breakthroughs in AI, including the world's first Roblox AI RPG and AI games without a game engine. 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 once a game developer before turning to the AI field. His inspiration came from an AI version of the degen Spartan project, which challenged people's stereotypes about AI. Through discussions with industry insiders, Shaw developed the idea of creating an AI investor, aimed at building a fully autonomous, trustworthy, and community-serving investment system.

Product Core

Virtuals Protocol: AI16Z

Virtuals Protocol serves as a发行 platform for AI Agents, functioning similarly to Pump Fun. The platform uses VIRTUAL as the trading pair, and each transaction consumes a certain proportion of VIRTUAL. In addition, Virtuals Protocol has established a common standard for its AI Agent tokens, emphasizing precision and careful planning.

AI16Z & ELIZA: Android in the AI field

AI16Z is a fund managed autonomously by AI, employing a hybrid strategy that includes community interaction mechanisms. ElizaOS, on the other hand, is an open-source AI Agent framework that allows developers to freely build and experiment with AI Agents. The core features of ELIZA include a character profile system, action system, providers, and evaluators.

Concept Project Overview

In the Virtuals ecosystem, VIRTUAL, as a protocol token, has a market value of 4.34B, and projects like AIXBT, GAME, and VADER are also performing well. In the AI16Z/Eliza ecosystem, the AI16Z fund has a market value of 2.29B, and projects such as the ELIZA framework, DegenAI, and SPORE each have their own unique features.

Catalysts Driving Coin Prices

Virtuals Protocol

The business model of Virtuals Protocol is clear, with its products closely linked to token prices. The platform does not pursue an increase in the number of tokens issued, but focuses on the emergence of high-quality projects. Currently, there are 8 tokens in the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem with a market value exceeding 100 million USD, collectively occupying 33.3% of the AI Agent market.

AI16Z/Eliza

The overall ecosystem of AI16Z is relatively weakly connected, and projects developed using the Eliza architecture do not directly provide value back to AI16Z/Eliza. The strategy of AI16Z is more like "surrounding the city from the countryside," expanding influence through cooperation with other well-known framework protocols.

In the future, whether Virtuals Protocol can continue to incubate outstanding AI Agent projects and whether AI16Z can deepen its cooperation with other protocols will be key points to observe the development of these two major platforms. As the AI Agent market continues to evolve, these two platforms will continue to lead the industry development, providing more innovative opportunities for users and developers.