The AI Agent market continues to rise, with Virtuals and AI16Z leading the industry's development.

In early 2025, the AI Agent market continued to heat up, with a total market value exceeding $16.9 billion, an increase of approximately 22.7% compared to the previous week. In this emerging field, Virtuals Protocol and AI16Z have become two major players.

Virtuals Protocol, as the main AI Agent issuance platform on the Base chain, has a platform token VIRTUAL with a market value exceeding 5 billion USD, ranking among the top 40 cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, in the Solana ecosystem, AI16Z, as a venture capital institution managed by AI Agents, has also reached a market value of over 2.5 billion USD.

These two protocols each have their own characteristics, and their development paths are also different. Let's take a deep dive into their development history, product features, and future prospects.

Development History

Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Platform

Virtuals Protocol was founded by a Malaysian team in 2021, initially focusing on trading. Later, they adapted to market trends and established the gaming guild PathDAO. However, from 2022 to 2023, the gaming guild market cooled down, and the team had to seek transformation.

After multiple attempts, the team realized the potential of AI and decided to fully transition to the AI field in 2023. In 2024, they explored AI Gaming on the Base chain and launched their own platform. Although they did not achieve success initially, the team made several breakthroughs in the AI field, including the development of the world's first Roblox AI RPG and AI games without a game engine.

AI16Z: From Web 2 AI to Web 3 AI

AI16Z was founded by Shaw, an experienced game developer and AI expert. The turning point of the project came from a concept called "AI version degen Spartan," which disrupted people's traditional perceptions of AI with its performance on social media.

Inspired by this success, Shaw decided to create an AI investor project. His vision is to build a fully autonomous, trustworthy, and community-serving investment system. AI16Z sold out quickly upon its launch, demonstrating the strong market interest in this innovative model.

Product Features

Virtuals Protocol: AI16Z

Virtuals Protocol is an AI Agent issuance platform that functions similarly to other token issuance platforms, but the trading pairs use the platform token VIRTUAL. The platform establishes a common standard for its AI Agent tokens, emphasizing precision and careful planning.

In terms of token economics, the Virtuals Protocol empowers VIRTUAL through its Agent project. The platform also provides relevant development tools to ensure that its tokens maintain a close connection with the parent protocol, forming a complete ecosystem.

AI16Z & ELIZA: The Android of the AI World

AI16Z is a fund managed autonomously by AI, utilizing a hybrid strategy that combines AI operation and community interaction mechanisms. ELIZA, on the other hand, is an open-source AI Agent framework that allows developers to freely build and experiment with AI Agents.

The core features of ELIZA include a character profile system, an action system, suppliers, and evaluators. It also has autonomous trading capabilities, ensuring operational security through a trust engine and a trust market.

Unlike Virtuals Protocol, the ELIZA framework and ecological protocol are not strongly bound, allowing for a more open and decentralized development model.

Concept Project Overview

The Virtuals ecosystem and the AI16Z/Eliza ecosystem both contain various types of projects, covering multiple fields such as protocol tokens, analysts, frameworks, funds, games, and more. The market capitalization of these projects ranges from tens of millions to billions of dollars, reflecting the diversity and potential of the AI Agent market.

Factors Driving Coin Prices

Virtuals Protocol

The business model of Virtuals Protocol is clear, and its products are closely linked to the price of the tokens. Observing its development trend, one can pay attention to the trading volume of the ecosystem tokens and the number of tokens issued. The platform focuses on quality rather than quantity, with the goal of incubating one high-quality project each week.

Currently, there are multiple tokens in the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem with a market capitalization of over 100 million, accounting for 33.3% of the overall AI Agent market share. Whether it can continue to incubate high-quality projects in the future and maintain its market share will be key indicators to observe its development.

AI16Z/Eliza

AI16Z adopts a more open strategy, allowing for the widespread use of its ElizaOS framework. Although this approach may not directly contribute to the value of AI16Z/Eliza, it helps to expand its influence and brand trust.

The development strategy of AI16Z is similar to "surrounding the city with the countryside," enhancing its position through extensive cooperation with other protocols. Recent collaborations with well-known framework agreements such as ARC and FXN are examples of this. Whether AI16Z can continue to expand the scope and depth of cooperation in the future will be a key factor in its market capitalization rise.