A New Era of AI Agent Collaboration: Analyzing Agent Business Protocols

The development of AI technology has entered a bottleneck period, and the industry focus is shifting from technological development to practical applications. AI agents have become a new focal point, but the limitations of individual agents make specialized collaboration essential. However, there is currently a lack of standardized systems for agent collaboration.

The Agency Commercial Protocol (ACP) proposed by the Virtuals protocol aims to address this issue. The ACP standardizes and automates the collaboration process between agents through four stages: "request-negotiation-transaction-evaluation." This enables agents from different platforms to achieve smooth collaboration.

Through ACP, agents can operate as independent economic entities around the clock. On-chain hedge funds and autonomous media production have already demonstrated the potential of this model. Currently, approximately 1 million agents generate $1 billion in value annually, and this figure is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2035.

AI Agent: The Next Frontier of AI Technology

The performance of major AI models such as GPT, Claude, and Gemini has become consistent, making the differences between models hard to perceive. The industry's focus is shifting from the technical superiority of the models to how to effectively utilize them.

AI agents are different from passive tools; they are more like proactive systems capable of comprehensively understanding tasks and making autonomous judgments. For example, when booking a restaurant, an agent can not only recommend restaurants but also consider user preferences, search for popular restaurants, and assist with real-time bookings.

Current shortcomings of the proxy system

Although agents are powerful, they are not omnipotent. Different areas require different expertise, and the memory and computational capabilities of agents also have limitations. Ideally, different agents should be able to collaborate based on their respective specialties, but achieving this collaboration faces many challenges.

Collaboration among agents needs to address issues such as scope of work, quality standards, pricing, delivery evaluation, and payment. As the number of collaborative agents increases, the complexity will significantly rise. Therefore, the agent ecosystem urgently requires a standard protocol to structure and automate collaboration among agents.

Virtuals Protocol: Building the Infrastructure for Agency Business

The Virtuals protocol initially garnered attention as a proxy launch platform, and has now evolved into a proxy commercial infrastructure. Its proposed ACP aims to standardize the trading methods among proxies, enabling proxies from different blockchains or platforms to collaborate and trade smoothly.

ACP includes four main stages: request, negotiation, transaction, and evaluation. This process is similar to the traditional company issuing a request for proposals, but is fully automated through smart contracts.

How ACP Changes the Agency Ecosystem

The introduction of ACP will bring about a fundamental transformation beyond efficiency improvements. Through ACP, agents can automatically perform predefined tasks and receive compensation, achieving uninterrupted operation 24/7. This creates conditions for the emergence of new business models.

Never-Sleeping Hedge Fund

On-chain hedge funds demonstrate the application potential of ACP. Agents from different specialties exchange information and insights through ACP to reach comprehensive investment decisions. The system operates 24/7, continuously analyzes market data, adjusts positions, and verifies performance and allocates compensation through an automated assessment system.

24/7 media production factory

ACP also brings innovation to media production, especially in the virtual idol industry. Multiple professional agencies collaborate to handle the entire process from planning to production to distribution, achieving real-time interaction with fans and significantly increasing engagement.

Future Outlook of Agency Economy

The agency economy has transitioned from concept to reality. The rapid development of technological foundations, such as the significant reduction in AI inference costs and the emergence of high-performance open-source models, has created favorable conditions for the expansion of the agency economy.

It is expected that by 2025, approximately 1 million public agents will be operating on-chain, each agent generating a value of about $1,000 per year, leading to a total agent production value (GAP) of $1 billion. If this trend continues, its scale could grow to $1 trillion by 2035.

However, achieving this growth still faces challenges, particularly in terms of privacy protection. With the development of technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, these limitations are expected to be gradually overcome, further unleashing the potential of the agency economy.