The AI Agent market is booming, with Virtual and AI16Z becoming industry leaders.

At the beginning of 2025, the AI Agent market continues to heat up, with a total market value exceeding $16.9 billion and a week-on-week growth of 22.7%. In this rapidly developing field, Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z have become the industry benchmarks.

Virtuals Protocol is the main AI Agent issuance platform on the Base chain, with its platform token VIRTUAL having a market cap exceeding $5 billion, making it one of the top 40 cryptocurrencies. In the Solana ecosystem, ai16z, as a venture capital institution managed by AI Agents, has also surpassed a market cap of $2.5 billion. The development routes and characteristics of these two protocols are different and worth exploring in depth.

Development History

Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Platforms

Virtuals Protocol was founded by a team from Malaysia in 2021, initially focusing on trading operations. Subsequently, they established the gaming guild PathDAO in response to market trends. However, from 2022 to 2023, the gaming guild market cooled down, prompting the team to explore various new fields, ultimately deciding to fully transition into the AI sector.

In 2024, they launched the AI Gaming platform on the Base chain. Although it did not achieve complete success initially, the team made several breakthroughs in the AI field, including the development of the world's first Roblox AI RPG and AI games without a game engine. They also launched the virtual streamer Luna, which generated stable income on short video platforms. Ultimately, the success of the GOAT project provided an excellent development opportunity for the 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. He has been involved in several AI-related projects and has dabbled in Web3 and 3D spatial networking.

The birth of AI16Z originated from a project called "AI version degen Spartan." This AI character's performance on social media has subverted people's stereotypes of AI, sparking widespread attention.

Inspired by this success, Shaw collaborated with other professionals in the industry and came up with the idea of creating AI investors. His goal is to build a fully autonomous, trustworthy, and community-serving investment system.

AI16Z set a fundraising target of 4,420 SOL at launch, and the project sold out in just 20 minutes, demonstrating strong market interest in this innovative model.

Core Product

Virtuals Protocol: AI16Z in the AI world

Virtuals Protocol serves as a distribution platform for AI Agents, functioning similarly to certain existing platforms, but uniquely utilizing the platform token VIRTUAL as the trading pool. The platform has established a common standard for its AI Agent tokens, emphasizing precise planning and autonomous operational capabilities.

In terms of token economics, Virtuals Protocol empowers VIRTUAL through its Agent project. The platform also provides relevant development tools for its AI Agents, ensuring the integrity of the overall ecosystem. Its model is similar to Apple's iOS system, emphasizing a closed ecosystem and standardization.

AI16Z & ELIZA: The Android of the AI World

AI16Z is a fund managed autonomously by AI, utilizing a hybrid strategy that includes AI operation and community interaction mechanisms. Community members can provide trading suggestions, and if they help the AI Agent to profit, they will gain more trust.

ElizaOS is an open-source AI Agent framework that allows developers to freely build and experiment with AI Agents. Its core features include a character profile system, action system, providers, and evaluators, aimed at providing a more human-like and interactive AI experience.

ELIZA also has autonomous trading capabilities, ensuring operational security through the trust engine and trust market. Its open architecture promotes the growth of the developer ecosystem, creating a virtuous cycle. Unlike Virtuals Protocol, Eliza's architecture is not strongly bound to the ecological protocol, resembling the open model of Android.

Driver Analysis

Virtuals Protocol

The business model of Virtuals Protocol is clear, with the product closely linked to the token price. Observing its development trend, attention can be focused on the trading volume of ecosystem tokens and the number of issued tokens.

Data shows that the token issuance of the Virtuals Protocol will peak at the end of November 2024 and then decline. The platform emphasizes quality over quantity, stating that hatching one high-quality project per week is sufficient to meet demand.

Currently, there are multiple tokens in the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem with a market capitalization exceeding 100 million USD, capturing 33.3% of the AI Agent market share, making it the largest ecosystem. Whether it can continue to incubate high-quality projects in the future will be the key to observing its development.

AI16Z/Eliza

The connection of the AI16Z ecosystem is relatively weak, and projects developed using the Eliza architecture do not directly provide value back to AI16Z/Eliza. This is also one of the reasons why the current market value of AI16Z is lower than that of the Virtuals Protocol.

AI16Z adopts an open policy, allowing everyone to use its framework. Emerging AI Agent projects can promote themselves using the ElizaOS architecture, and if approved by the founder Shaw, they can gain additional credibility.

The development strategy of AI16Z is similar to "surrounding the city from the countryside", expanding influence through extensive cooperation. Recent collaborations with other well-known framework agreements (such as ARC and FXN) also demonstrate its expansion ambitions.

Whether the market value of AI16Z can continue to rise in the future depends on the depth, speed, and breadth of its cooperation with other protocols. The industry looks forward to seeing more strong partnerships and collaboration cases.