The AI Agent market continues to heat up, with Virtual and AI16Z becoming industry leaders.

At the beginning of 2025, the AI Agent market continues to maintain a strong growth momentum. As of early January, the total market value has surpassed $16.9 billion, an increase of about 22.7% compared to the previous week. In this blue ocean, two platforms have emerged as industry benchmarks: Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z.

As the main AI Agent issuance platform on the Base chain, Virtuals Protocol's platform token VIRTUAL has a market capitalization of over $5 billion, ranking among the top 40 cryptocurrencies. In the Solana ecosystem, ai16z, managed by AI Agents, has also surpassed a market capitalization of $2.5 billion. These two protocols have their own characteristics and different developmental paths.

Development History

Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Issuance Platform

Virtuals Protocol was originally the gaming guild PathDAO, established by a Malaysian team at the end of 2021. After experiencing a downturn in the gaming guild market and several project attempts, the team decided in 2023 to fully transition into the AI field. In 2024, they explored AI Gaming on Base and launched the platform. Although initial success was not as expected, the team achieved several breakthroughs in the AI field, including the world's first Roblox AI RPG and AI games without a game engine. Ultimately, the success of the GOAT project provided an excellent development opportunity for Virtuals Protocol.

AI16Z: From Web 2 AI to Web 3 AI

The founder of ai16z, Shaw, was originally a game developer before shifting to the AI field. The real turning point came from a project called "AI version degen Spartan," which disrupted people's stereotypes about AI with its performance on social media. Inspired by this, Shaw communicated with industry insiders and came up with the idea of creating AI investors. When ai16z launched, it set a fundraising goal of 4,420 SOL, which was sold out in just 20 minutes, demonstrating the strong market interest in this innovative model.

Product Core

Virtuals Protocol is similar to iOS in the AI field, serving as a platform for issuing AI Agents. It establishes common standards for its AI Agent tokens, provides development tools, and empowers VIRTUAL through a token economic model. Its operating model is quite similar to Apple's iOS, emphasizing precision and careful planning.

AI16Z and ELIZA are more like the Android of the AI industry. AI16Z is a fund managed autonomously by AI, while ElizaOS is an open-source AI Agent framework. ELIZA features a character profile system, an action system, providers and evaluators, and also has autonomous trading capabilities. Unlike Virtuals Protocol, ELIZA's architecture is not strongly bound to the ecological protocol, emphasizing decentralization and openness.

Catalysts Driving Coin Prices

For the Virtuals Protocol, the continuity of price increases primarily depends on the trading volume of the ecological tokens and the number of issued tokens. Although the number of issued tokens has sharply declined, this reflects the platform's strategy of pursuing quality over quantity. Whether it can continue to incubate high-quality AI Agent projects in the future, and whether the overall ecosystem can maintain its market share, will be key to observing the development of the Virtuals Protocol.

The market value growth of AI16Z/Eliza mainly relies on the depth, speed, and quantity of cooperation with other protocols. Due to its open strategy, an increasing number of projects using the ElizaOS architecture will help enhance the brand trust of AI16Z. Recent collaborations with other well-known framework protocols have also added momentum to its future development.

The rapid development of the AI Agent market has provided vast opportunities for Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z/Eliza. The two platforms have adopted different strategies, each occupying an important position in the ecosystem. In the future, their success will depend on their ability to continue innovating, attract high-quality projects, and establish effective collaborations with the broader blockchain and AI communities.