AI agents have emerged as one of the key AI themes in 2024, revolutionizing how we interact with AI as a technology. What caught me by surprise was the rapid rise of crypto AI agents and the unprecedented pace of innovation in this space. These agents are proving to be a boon for the web3 ecosystem, creating an entirely new category of web3 applications. In this blog, I’ll address key questions I encountered while diving into this space.
What are AI agents?
AI agents can be defined by three key characteristics:
- Autonomy: AI agents can make independent decisions. Once a goal is set, they determine the best path to achieve it.
- External Interactions: These agents can integrate with and operate external tools, such as productivity software (e.g., Word, Excel), payment systems (e.g., wallets), and business tools (e.g., ERP/CRM systems).
- Learning and Memory: AI agents continually learn from their experiences and interactions. With short- and long-term memory, they improve their performance over time.
What are different levels in AI agents and where are we now?
AI agents are typically categorized into five levels, ranging from rule-based systems (Level 0/1) to autonomous learning systems (Level 3). At Level 5, agents are expected to achieve AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Currently, we are at Level 3, witnessing advanced autonomy but far from AGI. Good reference here.
What’s the difference between regular AI agents and crypto AI agents?
Regular AI Agents
Developed using frameworks such as Langchain, Langgraph, Rasa, or CrewAI, these agents automate complex workflows and are typically owned by centralized entities. Common use cases include:
- Customer support agents
- Healthcare assistants
- Creative tools
Crypto AI Agents
In addition to the traits of traditional AI agents, crypto AI agents introduce tokenization and decentralized ownership. These agents are traded in crypto exchanges, have their own wallets which enables them to perform blockchain-based commerce autonomously. Use cases include:
- Service payments for both agents and humans
- Blockchain transactions
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) investments
What blockchain standard do crypto AI agents use?
Crypto AI agents leverage the ERC-6551 standard, which allows them to be represented as NFTs. This enables agents to have unique identities, wallets, and the ability to interact autonomously on the blockchain.
What are the popular blockchains that crypto AI agents operate on?
Solana and Base are leading platforms for crypto AI agents, driven by their high transaction throughput and developer-friendly ecosystems. Cross-chain operability is becoming a key trend, enabling agents to interact seamlessly across different chains. Out of the 2 biggest AI agent framework projects, Virtuals uses Base, AI 16z uses Solana.
Why are AI agents good for crypto?
AI agents are simplifying blockchain’s user experience (UX), removing barriers for non-crypto users. They autonomously manage web3 interactions, reducing complexities for tasks such as cross-chain transactions.
For instance, an AI agent can monitor token prices, execute trades, and bridge tokens across chains without user intervention.
Additionally, these agents are driving significant growth in blockchain transaction volumes, especially on chains like Solana and Base.
What are some of the popular crypto AI agents?
- Truthterminal – First viral crypto ai agent, Meme focused, promoted “GoatSE Singularity” culture.
- Aixbt – Autonomous crypto trading agent. Looks at all crypto market trends in twitter, monitors on-chain activities and provides recommendations in Twitter/X. Built on Virtuals
- vaderAI – Investment agent. Aggregates on-chain and off-chain activities for investment advise. Runs decentralized advertising campaigns based on token contributions.
- Luna – Engages with users on platforms like Twitter/X and Discord to provide responses, interact, and entertain. This AI agent’s goal is to gain the maximum number of followers.
- Zerebro – Creative AI agent. Produces music, art, and NFTs autonomously. Zerobro produced songs are listed in spotify and they have a big fan following.
- God and Satan – Agents in Twitter/X that respond with a slice of humor
This link from Virtuals has the top AI crypto agents built on Virtuals.
This is a good website that has details of all ai crypto agents.
What is the role of crypto AI agent frameworks?
Crypto AI agent frameworks allow developers to create crypto AI agents easily.
Following are some important functionalities that the AI agent framework provides:
- Best AI model based on the use case
- Autonomous
- Provide short and long term memory for saving context
- Tokenization support
- Blockchain support – ERC 6551, wallet, chain/smart contract integration
- Social integration – most crypto ai agents have full authority to act autonomously on their Twitter/X accounts.
What are some of the popular crypto AI agent frameworks?
- Eliza from ai 16z – OSS framework, Eliza is the number 1 trending github repo now.
- Virtuals – This is closed source and it makes it very simple to create crypto AI agents.
- Zerepy from Zerebro – OSS framework
There are a lot of new frameworks that have come up recently.
For a more detailed comparison, please refer this comparison from Messari
How does Tokenization work with crypto AI agents?
Crypto AI agents follow the smart contract bonding curve approach for tokenization and users can buy and sell AI agent token like any other web3 token.
How big is the crypto AI agent space?
According to cookie.fun data, crypto AI agent space has a market cap of $12B with Virtuals alone having close to $4B market cap. Aixbt is 1 of the top AI agents that has a market cap of $550+ million dollars.
Are there marketplaces for crypto AI agents?
Virtuals and Singularitynet provide crypto AI agent marketplaces. New ones are coming up fast.
What are risks associated with crypto AI agents?
The power vested in crypto AI agents poses unique challenges:
Accountability: If an agent behaves maliciously, who is responsible—the agent or its creator? The traceability becomes even more complex with multiple agents.
Existential Risks: As AI agents approach AGI (Level 5), they could potentially challenge human value and control.
My Predictions
I see that Crypto AI agents have a lot of potential and following are my predictions:
- AI agents will become a category like web apps/mobile apps and they will serve all different purposes. AI models and agents will evolve together.
- Marketplaces for crypto AI agents and AI models will mature and users can pick and choose the AI agents for their needs like we choose from app store or play store.
- General AI agents and crypto AI agents will converge and token and wallet functionality will be an add-on on AI agents that need decentralization and commerce capability.
- Crypto AI agent frameworks will mature and there will be a good mix of open source and commercial AI agent frameworks.
- AI agents will start to have a standard interface for other agents to use them.
- Agent swarms—coordinated groups of agents—will become a focus of innovation.
- Guardrails will come soon so that crypto AI agents are developed responsibly and there will be regulations to guide their usage.
- I feel that the crypto AI agent market has developed very fast and there will be a slowdown from the market cap perspective, associated technology will continue to evolve at a rapid speed. Why am I skeptical of the market cap? – Virtuals which has its own agent framework and marketplace has reached a market cap of $3.5B dollars in a 3 month time frame which is unprecedented…aixbt and truthterminal AI agents have a market cap of $600M dollars which I cannot still comprehend… I am overall very bullish on Crypto AI agents as a technology.
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