An article explaining the development status of ai16z and Virtuals: occupying more than half of the AI ​​Agent market share, both face the challenge of ecological centralization

Author: Nancy, PANews

With the gradual improvement of infrastructure and the gradual implementation of application scenarios, the encrypted AI Agent ecosystem is becoming increasingly prosperous, showing a new market development trajectory, and liquidity and user participation are also rising. In this AI Agent craze, ai16z and Virtuals Protocol are undoubtedly the two most powerful representative projects, and their ecology has attracted various capitals that have heard of the news to actively dig for money.

**ai16z and Virtuals dominate the AI ​​Agent market, contributing more

than half of the market share**

Although the AI ​​Agent ecosystem has risen rapidly in the encryption market and attracted a lot of attention and capital, its market structure is still single and mainly relies on the promotion of a few leading projects.

According to the latest data from Cookie.fun, as of December 30, the overall market value of AI Agent has reached US$11.68 billion, with an increase of nearly 39.1% in the past seven days. This growth trend shows the rapid growth of the AI ​​Agent ecosystem in the encryption market.

From the perspective of ecological scale, the entire encrypted AI Agent has an obvious head effect, mainly led by the two projects Virtuals and ai16z. Specifically, the ecological market value of Virtuals reached US$5.01 billion and ai16z was US$1.63 billion. The two accounted for 56.8% of the AI ​​Agent market share. This also means that the current growth and development of AI Agent relies more on the construction of these two leading projects.

At the same time, in terms of type, the market value of Virtuals exceeds that of customized AI Agents, which is US$4.67 billion, and the cumulative market value of other categories reaches US$1.8 billion.

From the perspective of on-chain distribution, Base and Solana are the two main battlefields for AI Agents. Among them, the market value of AI Agent on Base is approximately US$5.76 billion, and the market value of Solana is US$5.47 billion. The two together contribute 96.1% of the overall market. The cumulative market value of other on-chain projects is only US$920 million, further indicating that The AI ​​Agent ecosystem is still in its infancy.

Although Base and Solana are comparable in terms of AI Agent market size, their ecological compositions are significantly different. The main project of the Base ecosystem is Virtuals, and 86.9% of the projects come from this ecosystem. In contrast, ai16z only occupies nearly one-third of the market share on Solana, which shows that the AI ​​Agent ecosystem on Solana is richer and more diverse than Base.

Different ecological development paths are presented , but

the market concentration is obvious

With the popularity of Virtuals and ai16z, their ecological projects have also become the focus of attention and betting among market investors.

According to daos.fun data, as of December 30, ai16z’s net asset value (NAV) was approximately US$23.355 million, covering more than 1,400 tokens. Among these tokens, there are only three tokens with a market value of over one million US dollars, namely ELIZA, fxn and degenai. The cumulative market value of the three accounts for 84.3% of the total; the asset size is between 100,000 and 1 million US dollars. There are 6 tokens, and the market value of the remaining tokens is less than 100,000 US dollars. This distribution shows that ai16z’s token portfolio is relatively concentrated. A few high-value tokens dominate the overall asset size, while the market value of most tokens is relatively dispersed, showing that the ecosystem is still in a highly differentiated state. .

Compared with ai16z, the quality of Virtuals ecological projects is relatively high, and it has recently been hotly discussed because its market value exceeds the star AI project Bittensor (TAO). Despite this, there is also a certain structural imbalance in the Virtuals ecosystem.

The official website of Virtuals shows that as of December 30, there are currently approximately 510 Virtuals ecological projects. Among them, there are 4 projects with a market value of more than 100 million, namely AIXBT, GAME, Luna and VaderAI , accounting for 19.2% of the overall ecosystem; there are 99 projects with a market value between 1 million and 100 million US dollars, and the remaining 60 The market value of % of the projects is less than US$100,000. Virtuals' overall ecological project has gained more market recognition, but there are certain concentration problems in its ecological development.

Regarding the different AI Agent development routes of ai16z and Virtuals, Web3 independent researcher Haotian previously published an article pointing out that ai16z is more open source and more like an "Android-style" developer ecological alliance route, but because the ai16z token is at the extreme of tokenless economics , resulting in the lack of a reasonable evaluation model for its tokens and the inability to form a synergy in the short term. However, all this will be resolved after a systematic Tokenomics. At the same time, every member of ai16z Family Bucket has shown his or her own talents, and the potential lies in the developer community. The first thing founder Shaw has to do is to lead the scattered FamilyMart into a super open source growth flywheel driven by the technical open source community.

In a recent interview with PANews , Shaw revealed that ai16z will announce a new token economics proposal around January 1, 2025, including the LP matching mechanism, DeFi function integration, etc.

 _Comparison between Virtuals and ai16z, source:[@0xgangWhat](https://x.com/0xgangWhat)_ 

In contrast, Virtuals are relatively closed. Haotian pointed out that Virtuals has taken an "Apple-style" ecological expansion route and is more like an AI Agent "star-making dream factory." Since Virtuals had complete token economics in the early days, users need to pledge VIRTUAL tokens to create AI Agents, and users need to consume VIRTUAL tokens to purchase new AI Agent tokens. Therefore, when more AI Agents are issued on Virtuals, the value of Virtuals tokens will increase. The greater the demand, the positive growth flywheel effect will naturally occur. However, since Virtuals focuses on asset issuance platforms and does not provide a standard AI Agent framework base, this will lead to greater homogeneity of AI Agents on the platform. Virtuals, an asset issuance and light technology ecological breakthrough, is essentially an inherent limitation of a closed ecology.

From pure MEME to on-chain applications, **AI Agent revolutionizes

the market operation model**

Behind the hype of Virtuals and ai16z is the increasing attention to AI Agent, which is also an important manifestation of the development and evolution of MEME.

"AI is the biggest theme of human technology and productivity improvement in the next 20 years, and can be integrated into all Crypto categories, including DeFi, GameFi, NFT, Desci, etc. During the period of rapid improvement, a large number of new applications and technologies will be brought about, and these can Application in Crypto. "Crypto KOL 0xWizard believes that new targets combined with AI will be able to create a new market value of assets on the chain, and even create a new total crypto market value.

“From the initial pure MEME like GOAT to the AI ​​that can chat Agent, then to on-chain funds like ai16z, and then to new asset issuance platforms like Virtual and Spore, each step is getting closer and closer to the application. The essence of this round of on-chain market is that new 'application projects' bypass. Exchanges and VCs can communicate directly The model of creating new assets on the chain realizes the redistribution of interests. At the same time, project parties do not need to lick VC, fight for resources, and find exchanges to pay tolls. They can directly pull them out and 'walk around' on the chain to see if the market pays. .” Crypto KOL pointed out @Michael_Liu93 .

Haotian also believes that the environment has changed, and the logic of market capture of value has also changed, which is mainly reflected in the following points: (1) From the past many infrastructure stacks that were divorced from actual market demand to the use of AI Agent application front-end to verify market demand; (2) In the past, VC rounds of financing have led to increasingly narrow profit margins in the secondary market. Now projects built in the form of open source Public Good can directly finance the secondary market, and allow AI Agent's independent management of assets can bring greater room for imagination to the project; (3) In the past, airdrop methods such as acquiring early users and traffic have brought subsequent operational pressure, and opening in the MEME secondary method can be suitable for the continued growth of Tokenomics (LP) Handling fees, transaction taxes, reserved shares Release, etc.); (4) After breaking through the CEX currency listing, it will gradually tend to be dominated by DEX, and high-quality projects will have a greater chance of "grassroots counterattack"; (5) Realize new market operation rules, and do not integrate with the community and do not It is difficult for projects that always focus on the front line of products to take off in the market and ecology.