Original author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
In the past month, AI Agent has set off a new wave of craze in the crypto industry.
In less than a month, the market value of the entire AI Agent track project reached tens of billions of US dollars. Among them, the market value of Virtuals reached 3 billion US dollars, and the market value of ai16z and Fartcoin reached 1 billion US dollars. According to incomplete statistics from Foresight News, there are at least 14 AI Agent-related cryptocurrencies with a market value of more than 100 million US dollars.
Many Web3 practitioners said: AI Agent may be one of the biggest narratives in this cycle, just like DeFi, NFT and Metaverse that appeared in the last two cycles. So, when a new crypto narrative is born in its early stages, how can we find the leading crypto project of AI Agent through a good set of methodologies? The author tries to list ten methods for readers.
1. On-chain income method
This method is more suitable for judging platform-based AI Agents, such as Clanker, vvaifu.fun, Virtuals, etc. If there are changes in the daily on-chain revenue and on-chain transaction numbers, such as rapid growth for several consecutive days, it may mean that this AI Agent may have good development. On the contrary, it may mean that the development has stagnated.
Image source: Dune
For example, Clanker, as a star AI Agent project in the Base ecosystem, can be seen from the on-chain data that after November 26, the number of tokens issued, traders and on-chain revenue began to decline, and this trend was immediately reflected in the token price.
2. Developer Attention Method
More stars on Github may mean that more developers pay attention to and recognize this framework. This method is more suitable for judging framework-based AI agents, such as Eliza.
Search Github to see the developer attention of framework AI Agent, that is, how many stars it has. For example, ai16z/Eliza has received 5,300 stars in less than a month. This is a very surprising data.
Data source: GitHub
As shown in the above figure, the developer attention of ai16z/Eliza has surpassed uniswap in just one month. This shows the developers interest in this framework. Another set of data can also be compared: Sui currently has 6,400 stars, Solana has 13,000 stars, Ethereum has 50,000 stars, and Base has 70,000 stars.
However, it should be noted that the number of stars on Github can also be inflated, although this behavior is not common. Therefore, this indicator can only be used as an auxiliary reference for decision-making.
3. KOL Fan Quantity Method
A relatively certain track for AI Agent is: KOL.
Currently, the more famous AI Agent-style KOLs include: Terminal of Truths (210,000 followers), aixbt (160,000 followers), Zerebro (60,000 followers), Eliza (14,000 followers), LUNA (30,000 followers on Twitter, 500,000 followers on TIKTOK), etc.
One of the major differences in this round of AI revolution is the change in semantics. I expect that there will be a KOL leader in AI Agent, and the market value of the token of this leader is expected to exceed 5 billion US dollars. The change in the number of fans may become one of the important measurement indicators.
4. The influence of leading figures
There are more and more leaders in the AI industry entering the Crypto market, including Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z (representative project supported: ai16z), Sam Altman (representative project supported: Worldcoin), etc. They have all brought multiple cryptocurrencies worth more than $1 billion to the cryptocurrency circle. It is expected that there will be more in the future, such as Musk and Grok, which he founded.
There are also companies with relatively low certainty, such as Apple, Meta, tiktok, and other companies, such as Claude, Copilot, and Gemini. These AI manufacturers are likely to bring something different to Crypto.
Special attention should be paid to those technology giants who are researching both AI and Crypto, such as Musk, Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, and Huang Renxun, etc. Their leadership in the technology industry can often be transmitted to the crypto industry.
5. Breaking the circle of the external world
If AI Agent is indeed one of the biggest narratives in this cycle, we need to pay extra attention to the influence of AI Agent on the outside world. For example, Web2 developers are attracted by Web3 AI Agent frameworks and products. As far as I know, Eliza has attracted the attention of some AI practitioners outside the circle.
KOL products, such as Terminal of Truths and LUNA, have also attracted attention from outsiders. They have more than 200,000 fans and their influence is still expanding. We need to understand and judge whether this trend will further break through the circle and affect the wider outside world.
6. The “currency listing effect” method of the top exchanges
Practitioners who participated in the Sandbox in the early days may know that some metaverse concepts took off after Binance listed coins. The reason why the top exchanges are called top exchanges is that they need to ensure that the coins they list can lead the market. If they are led by other exchanges, they will gradually lose their status as top exchanges.
Pay more attention to the coin listing information and Launchpad information of the five exchanges Binance, Upbit, Coinbase, Bitget, and Hype. They are in fierce competition for the coin listing effect in this cycle.
Especially Coinbase and Hype, Americans are indeed ahead of other regions in the field of pan-AI agents, and they may have a faster information advantage.
7. Public Chain Method
Some public chains are naturally suitable for the birth of AI Agent projects, and naturally lower the threshold for the birth of AI Agents. Finding a few good public chains and finding good AI Agent projects in these public chains can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
For example, Base has 70,000 developer stars, which exceeds Ethereum and far exceeds Solana and Sui. It can be said to be a leader in latecomer advantage.
Coinbase itself also attaches great importance to AI Agent and has made early arrangements. This will give it a great first-mover advantage in future competition.
The advantage of Solana is that it has a good meme platform, and AI Agent relies heavily on memes to rise. This is a very big advantage of Solana.
8: AI Agent Community Law
Everyone has their own blind spots, but the power of a team is all-encompassing.
It is very important to establish your own AI Agent exchange group and community, or find one or two such high-quality communities. Opportunities for AI Agents are often born in corners that no one pays attention to, and this is when the power of the community is needed.
9. Track segmentation
AI Agent is also divided into various tracks, such as KOL track, beauty anchor track, investment research blogger track, meme platform track, VC track, platform track, framework track...
There are many tracks within AI Agent, and not all of them can be proven to be unfalsifiable. You need to find the track that really has a chance of surviving to the end.
10: Origin
Who started the beginning? Which AI Agent started the narrative of the entire track? It may be the leader of this track.
In the NFT track, CryptoPunks has always been in a transcendent position, Ape has created a new narrative for the entire track, and Fat Penguin is one of the best NFTs combined with Web2; in the Metaverse track, Sandbox and Decentraland were listed on the top exchanges very early and occupied the leading position in the Metaverse; Uniswap was the first to realize the concept of automated market makers in decentralized exchanges (DEX), becoming a pioneer in the market... Projects that achieve systematic innovation often get the largest share of the track dividends.
It will be like BTC, you will always feel it is expensive, but looking back you will find that it was really cheap at that time.
