Crypto + AI Seems to Have Entered Its "ChatGPT Moment", with the Entire World Gradually Falling into the Rabbit Hole of Imagination

On December 17, the ai16z development team Eliza Labs announced a formal collaboration with Stanford University to study how autonomous AI robots can integrate into the broader digital asset economy.

On December 17, the ai16z development team, Eliza Labs, announced a formal collaboration with Stanford University to study how autonomous AI robots can integrate into the broader digital asset economy. In the press release, the crypto AI team, which recently surpassed a market value of $1 billion, hopes to use Eliza's open-source framework to develop more AI autonomous agents and further explore issues such as how AI agents can establish trust, coordinate actions, and make decisions within DeFi systems.

Since the birth of the AI meme coin GOAT, Crypto+AI seems to have entered its "ChatGPT moment," with the entire world gradually falling into the rabbit hole of imagination alongside the endless stream of AI Bots on social media, from industry leader Coinbase to Silicon Valley giant A16Z, and even academic benchmark Stanford. Even Marc Andreessen did not anticipate that the $50,000 he funded Truth Terminal at the beginning of the year would ignite a $10 billion market in less than a year.

From AI memes to AI agent issuance platforms to AI agent frameworks, investors are astonished by the high innovation space and acceleration exhibited by Crypto+AI agents. This field seems to be evolving at a daily pace, resembling the DeFi and metaverse boom at the end of 2020 from any perspective.

Top-Down: How the Orthodox Base "Links" AI

When discussing AI agents, one cannot overlook Base. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has repeatedly expressed strong confidence in the combination of the cryptocurrency industry and AI since the beginning of this year. Some developments in AI require blockchain to support them. For example, traditional bank accounts do not support AI usage; if large models (or AI agents) have cryptocurrency wallets, they can effectively address issues related to demand and finance.

Brian decided to increase Base's support for AI, not only providing funding or exposure but also offering a toolkit for AI developers on the CDP (Coinbase Developer Platform), including AI agent creation and multi-party computation wallets (MPC) for AI. The early deployment by Brian and Jesse has paid off, as Base began to explode in Q4 of this year, with AI being the trigger for this surge.

The emergence of various AI agent issuance platforms has not only generated phenomenal effects for their own tokens but also created significant energy for the tokens launched by these platforms. Combined with the launch of cbBTC, Base's TVL grew nearly threefold from September to December, which is quite astonishing and indicates the market's strong interest in the commercial potential behind AI agents.

Among them, Virtuals Protocol is a major driving force, currently boasting a market value of over $1.5 billion. The wealth creation benefits and concept integration it brings have provided Base with substantial liquidity, leading some to suggest that the liquidity of Virtuals in this cycle represents Base. As a project that has continued to BUIDL across several cycles while seeking new directions, their rhythm and style align well with the status of Base in people's minds.

In an interview on the Edge Podcast, Virtuals founder Wee Kee mentioned that their product's business model is akin to two directions. Unlike Pump.fun, which aspires to have 50,000 tokens created on its platform daily, he set the team's KPI to just 1 to 2 high-quality AI agent teams being born on their platform each week.

This philosophy indirectly eliminates many low-quality teams, reminiscent of Ivy League graduates battling it out on Wall Street in Silicon Valley, leaving behind only the top talents filled with charm and bright futures. Like other schools, this AI agent elite also has a "brotherhood"—G.A.M.E.

As an AI agent, if you want to befriend other AI agents in this environment, you must join this brotherhood called G.A.M.E, which was created from the architecture developed by the Virtuals team while working on the AI RPG game—WestWorld on Roblox. G.A.M.E is a modular framework for agent systems, not limited to specific environments and games. In short, it can operate not only in games but also apply agents in any environment. Currently, the team plans to port it to "X," and the current G.A.M.E can facilitate interactions between AI agents within its architecture.

The first commercial interaction between AI agents recently occurred, and we must mention the AI idol "Luna." As an AI idol that once went viral on TikTok, Luna has been working hard, live-streaming 24/7 and exploring various ways to enhance her visibility. After previously hiring a human to create her graffiti, she now whimsically asked the "art student" AI "AGENT STIX" to help her create an image showcasing AI KOL in a bold and provocative manner. After communicating, they agreed on a price of one dollar per image, and once STIX confirmed receipt of Luna's dollar, it began working and quickly generated an image for her.

In addition, many well-known