Ethereum's New Direction: Virtuals and ACP Open Up the AI Market, Reshaping the Ecological Landscape

While we were still discussing whether AI assistants could take on community management and replace human labor, Virtuals has already set its sights on a grander vision—how AI assistants can collaborate, settle, and build a complete on-chain AI labor market.

On June 10th, the Ethereum official announced "Ethereum is for AI" and retweeted the message "Now On Ethereum" from Virtuals, heating up the collaboration between the two parties. This news has sparked a strong reaction in the community, with over 1.1 million views as of the time of writing.

This collaboration is of great significance, marking the beginning of Ethereum's return to the center stage.

Currently, Ethereum needs a strong leverage to catch up; while Virtuals can accelerate development through ACP and consolidate its advantageous position.

A universal standard that allows every AI assistant to no longer be just a simple "worker"; A universal standard that enables every AI assistant to become an important node in business collaboration. A universal standard will open up a trillion-dollar on-chain AI labor market.

What kind of surprises will Virtuals bring this time with the combination of ACP and EVM?

Ethereum ecosystem encounters a chill, innovation陷入困境

Since the AI boom began at the end of last year, Ethereum seems to have been unable to participate in it, and as a result, there have been many doubts in the market.

As a pioneer of Layer 1, Ethereum's status is indisputable, but it has underperformed in the wave of AI. During the last active period of AI assistants, the absence of the Ethereum ecosystem shifted market attention to other platforms. Even during the rebound of AI-related projects a few months ago, Ethereum remained overlooked, until a recent collaboration with a certain project sparked market anticipation.

So, what will be the next highlight of the Ethereum ecosystem?

It is undeniable that Ethereum still possesses many potential advantages:

• TVL ranks first, nearly 8 times that of the second place: a large amount of assets still stored in Ethereum. According to data platforms, the current TVL of Ethereum exceeds 62 billion, which is about 8 times that of the second place.

• The most diverse DeFi ecosystem with over 1300 DeFi protocols: In addition to the TVL advantage, the DeFi protocols and gameplay on Ethereum are also the most diverse. According to data platforms, the DeFi protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem exceed 1300, ranking first among all ecosystems.

• The Ethereum ecosystem has the most developers: Another advantage of Ethereum is its use of the Solidity language, which is currently the most commonly used programming language among Web3 developers. Whether it is Layer 1 or Layer 2, Solidity is regarded as an entry-level language for novice developers.

TVL brings in funds; Protocols and developers bring liquidity potential for funds.

These all indicate that Ethereum has a solid foundation, but is simply lacking a breakthrough.

When the world's largest computer falls into an innovation dilemma, it is necessary to look for new breakthrough points.

In the first collaboration between Virtuals and Ethereum, the possibility of success has already been demonstrated. In the long run, AI may become a new driving force in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Virtuals ACP: New Opportunities in Ethereum

AI may become a new driving force in the Ethereum ecosystem, but why is it Virtuals' AI?

The key to the answer lies in ACP: Agent Commerce Protocol.

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

It has the following features:

• Cross-chain collaboration: Regardless of which chain the agent runs on, as long as the ACP rules are followed, seamless collaboration can be achieved.
• Framework independence: ACP does not rely on a specific AI framework, any agent can participate.
• Four-stage process: Request, Negotiate, Transaction, Evaluate, with each step recorded and executed through smart contracts.

The reason ACP has become the focus of Virtuals' next development is precisely because these characteristics will bring a qualitative leap to Virtuals and its thriving AI ecosystem.

ACP brings two major qualitative changes to Virtuals

Friends who understand the Virtuals ecosystem know that ACP will unite all AI assistants, and the official team has also shared some case studies. But if you think this is just a simple transition from a single assistant to multiple assistants collaborating, then you underestimate the potential of ACP.

We believe that ACP will bring two qualitative changes to Virtuals:

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

As we all know, Virtuals originated from a certain ecosystem, and then expanded to other chains, and now it has landed on the Ethereum mainnet. ACP is not just about connecting multiple assistants, but also about connecting the "assistants scattered across multiple chains."

In other words, no matter which chain you are on,

Assistants can directly collaborate across chains.

A certain assistant is managing your assets on a certain chain; Another assistant provides metaverse space for a certain ecosystem's AI; ......

ACP is like a cross-chain communication protocol for a certain ecosystem, providing the most basic interoperability capabilities for all assistants.

Qualitative Change 2: Multi-Framework Collaboration, ACP Becomes the Universal Standard for AI Developers

ACP does not rely on a specific AI framework, meaning that whether it is a certain framework or another, although the current level of ACP support is uncertain, the official description states that it will enable interoperability between different framework assistants.

We know that a certain framework is primarily promoted by Virtuals, but there are still various other frameworks in the Web3 AI field, or developers may build their own frameworks.

The multi-framework collaboration of ACP will allow assistants from different frameworks to enjoy the benefits of the entire AI assistant era.

For developers, accessing ACP will become a highly attractive and even necessary task.

Web3 developers generally master or issue tokens through certain standards, The integration of ACP by AI assistant developers will also become a common capability in the future.

ACP is a protocol, a certain framework is a framework, then what is Virtuals?

Can Virtuals be considered Layer 1?

Recalling the interview with the co-founder of Virtuals last year, he mentioned: Virtuals is Layer1 and should be viewed from the perspective of Layer1 for its valuation.

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

A certain framework provides convenience for developers. ACP is a protocol that integrates different ecosystems.

But Virtuals themselves are difficult to define simply.

A certain framework, ACP developed by Virtuals, can quickly connect to the entire Virtuals ecosystem. Assistants from different chains can be published through Virtuals; Users participating in the staking of the Virtuals ecosystem tokens, including the tokens themselves, also have the opportunity to receive ecological airdrops; Staking a certain percentage of tokens allows participation in governance.

Friends from the last cycle should be quite familiar with a certain ecosystem, whose contribution to Web3 mainly lies in the technology itself, with many new projects utilizing the technology provided by this ecosystem.

However, the most criticized aspect of this ecosystem is that, despite supporting numerous projects, its tokens have basically no value capture. In this regard, Virtuals seems to have made good optimizations, allowing its tokens to gradually evolve from "project tokens" to "the main currency of the entire ecosystem."

A certain framework is regarded as the underlying infrastructure for AI assistants, And the current status of Virtuals may be more important than the framework.

Can the AI assistant have its own Layer 1? Virtuals Protocol.

Seize the opportunity, stablecoins boost, ACP will launch the trillion-dollar economy of Web3 AI

What is the current status of the AI assistant ecosystem of Virtuals?

According to the ecological map compiled by a certain user, the Virtuals ecosystem now includes 11 major categories such as lifestyle, DeFAI, prediction markets, infrastructure, games, and more than 100 assistants.

Unlike Web2, the AI assistant of Web3 grows on the chain.

Recently, the "stablecoin" that has attracted much attention will push the on-chain economy of Web3 to new heights.

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

In the official content of Virtuals ACP, there is an example where an assistant collaborates with multiple assistants to provide users with different types of earning opportunities.

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

What if an assistant could directly trade on-chain and manage more Web2 assets?

This will allow the Virtuals ecosystem to enter Web2 faster, while the AI kingdom of Virtuals is accelerating its formation.

The ACP lead stated in an interview: ACP is a product that drives a trillion-dollar economy. Ethereum turns code into money; while ACP will transform assistants into a trillion-dollar workforce. Imagine millions to billions of on-chain assistants providing services, trading, and collaborating without permission— we can view ACP as such a foundation: it allows AI assistants to click "send" on a massive payment track 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 of a project writing down the basic rules of DeFi, or missed the explosion of NFTs brought by a certain platform – this time, Virtuals will write the first line of code for the new business logic of AI with ACP.

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