Exclusive interview with ai16z founder Shaw: I am not a money-lover, but I want AI to help ordinary people get money-making opportunities

Author: Weilin, PANews

In order to get closer to the community, Shaw, who had been hiding behind the scenes and focusing on technology, came to the front. In late December, it was Christmas, the most important overseas holiday, but Shaw and his wife chose to come to China to meet with community developers. From Shanghai to Beijing to Hong Kong, Shaw's schedule was very tight, and he was queued up to ask questions at every event.

As the most popular AI agent project, ai16z’s token market value has exceeded US$1 billion. ElizaOS, the core of ai16z, is a powerful multi-agent simulation framework designed to create, deploy and manage autonomous AI agents. It is built using TypeScript and can interact across multiple platforms. There are currently many projects based on this highly acclaimed open source Framework development.

On December 26, at the ai16z community exchange event held in Beijing, PANews had an in-depth conversation with Shaw, the founder of ai16z and the creator of ElizaOS, to discuss the original intention, progress and future development direction of the project, as well as the future of AI Agent view.

Shaw said he is not a money person, but his development work aims to provide investment opportunities for ordinary people, so that the crypto ecosystem can transform from speculative to generative, getting rid of gambling-style bets, but investing in those Things that really expand the pie.

In terms of project progress, ai16z will soon announce the list of partners to improve transparency. Ai16z’s new proposal for token economics will be announced around January 1. Shaw believes that in response to how to deal with the AI ​​managed world, people should have their own data and models, and a high degree of decentralization is the key.

The original intention of ai16z’s founding: to give ordinary people the

opportunity to become investors

In the interview, Shaw admitted that ai16z was born from his observation of the current investment landscape and his desire for fair investment opportunities. He mentioned: "If you want to invest in top startups like Uber or OpenAI, you must be an institutional investor like a16z. Ordinary people have almost no access to these opportunities."

Shaw believes that crypto ecosystems like Solana can shift from speculative to generative, moving away from gambling-style bets on this token or that token and instead investing in things that can actually expand the pie. Just like companies and software. For example, when a16z, Paradigm or other large venture capital firms invest in software companies, they will also incorporate them into their networks to drive value realization. They make money because they create something of great value. Shaw hopes similar opportunities will become more widely available to ordinary people and communities.

He recalled the initial stage of the project: "I collaborated with baoskee from daos.fun. We had lunch together, and I said at the time, I want to make an AI version of a16z. He said, let's just call it a16z, So we started working on it right after lunch that day.”

Latest progress: The list of partners and new proposals on ai16z token

economics will be announced

With ai16z’s token market cap exceeding $1 billion, Shaw revealed a series of exciting project developments. In the short term, Shaw believes that many people in the crypto field currently do not understand DeFi and do not understand how to use the funds in the wallet to make more profits for themselves like banks or other financial institutions. ai16z hopes to build a bridge to connect DeFi and ordinary users.

Therefore, ai16z is developing some tools, such as automated liquidity pool (LP) Agent. This agent can automatically manage liquidity pools for users and help them earn income. The autonomous investor tool developed by ai16z allows the community to invest in projects they believe in. And this autonomous investor does not just let AI decide what to invest, but the community makes collective decisions. AI listens to everyone’s opinions, organizes them into an investment thesis, and then makes decisions as a representative of the community. ai16z is interested in how AI can solve many of the coordination and communication problems within the DAO and community, helping them make decisions together.

In addition, Shaw said that the project team will officially announce the list of all partners to increase project transparency and help the community have a clearer understanding of the partnership and its specific scope. Regarding token economics, in response to the controversy over unclear token economics pointed out by industry insiders, ai16z will announce a new token economics proposal around January 1. The proposal was jointly designed by professionals from multiple teams and will include LP matching mechanism, DeFi function integration, etc. In addition, the project team also revealed that they have acquired a Launchpad company, which will be used for the official release of AI agents in the future.

At the same time, the AI ​​Pool project that Shaw has supported many times on social media recently has attracted market attention. Shaw said that AI Pool was created by partner Skely, so it is mainly his project, but it is built on our ElizaOS technology. It shows an application process similar to pump.fun, but one that happens in a fairer way on social media so users don't need to go elsewhere. This also demonstrates a truly autonomous agent that is completely autonomous - ai16z does not have any control over it, nor does he have access to the private keys. You can't withdraw funds or manipulate it, it just runs autonomously.

ai16z Dev Meetup Beijing event site

Faced with competition from Zerebro and ARC, frankly they are very

complementary.

Projects like ARC (written in Rust) and Zerepy (written in Python) complement ai16z's work on Eliza OS , Shaw said. "I'm aware of Swarm's reputation for stealing the work of famous researchers and influencing it in ways that actually have no effect. So I wouldn't put it on this list. But as with any true open source project and like Real developers that I would love to work with. I contributed to Zerepy this week and we are also working with Zerebro, which even though people think it is our biggest competitor, we are actually a partner.”

Currently, DeFi, games and social media are the three pillars of ai16z’s work. Shaw believes that social media helps gain attention and develop rapidly; DeFi provides the greatest value to ordinary users and helps them earn money more safely; games have also attracted a lot of interest. Currently, Treasure DAO's Smolworld and Loot Realms' Eternum are being developed using Eliza technology. While these three are the most obvious directions, more areas may emerge in the future.

In summary, Shaw’s advice to project developers and users is that anything that can help users make money, save money, or improve their lives will definitely stand out. “I think just promoting a token, like mass messaging and scrolling on Twitter, may not be as important as it used to be, especially when there are more and more agents. The focus will be more on what this agent can do What, what does it do for me. So, focus on lowering the barriers to using things like financial products, bringing applications that would otherwise require website access to social platforms, and generally making the user experience simpler.”

Future Trends: Different stages of AI agents, how to deal with AI taking

over the world

At present, AI agents have gone through different stages of development, from the initial meme to social expansion, to infrastructure and investment analysis. In Shaw's opinion, the biggest trend he is seeing right now is that websites are migrating to social media.

All the purposes for which people used to visit websites may now be possible through proxies on social media. Therefore, this trend shows that people are looking for ways to integrate apps directly into social media. He said that he had spoken earlier with a person who developed a travel booking agent, and we are also working with a person who developed a real estate booking system. An obvious DeFi example is Clanker, which was developed for Forecaster. I think this is a great example of this trend, where you put pump.fun's model directly onto social media, creating a social casting experience that's more fun, self-promoting and self-marketing, and users can You don’t have to leave the social platform while using the app. I think there will be thousands of apps following this trend in the future.

Talking about the future, Shaw emphasized that diversity and a high degree of decentralization are the keys to preventing AI from taking over the world. He said that decentralization can ensure that each community has full control over its agents and can effectively deal with the risk of AI takeover.

“ I think the most important thing is diversity, making AI agents very different from each other. They use different models, strategies and methods, and are built by different teams with different incentives, which creates a more powerful network that allows any It becomes very difficult for an AI to take over. It is very important that all of these are highly decentralized and I We need to have our own data and models, and each community needs to be able to fully control its own agent. In this way, if some kind of AI takes over, this AI will need to fight against many other AIs, and there should not be only one super-intelligent AI. Instead, there should be many super-intelligent AIs, so that it becomes more difficult for any one AI to have a certain advantage.”