From scolding to appreciation, take a look at the love-hate relationship among AI Agent developers

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

At the beginning of the new year, the market values ​​of ai16z and swarms, two ace projects in the AI ​​Agent track, both hit new highs.

Everyone was happy, but Shaw, the founder of ai16z, gave swarms a blow. He published a post criticizing the developer of the swarms project, Kye Gomez, saying bluntly that he "does not know how to write code and has a history of fraud." The target was "character issues." Kye has previously attracted attention for being a 19-year-old high school dropout and was praised as a "genius boy".

This controversy also caused the two major projects to fall by more than 20% in the short term, but they recovered their losses after just one day, and swarms continued to hit a new high of $0.6.

This incident has also put the complex relationships of love and hate among the developers behind AI Agent into the spotlight again. Odaily Planet Daily will briefly review the relationship between the developers behind the recent representative AI Agents in this article, and observe the impact of Devs on the price trends of AI Agents and related Meme coins from the side.

The central node of the relationship diagram: ai16z founder Shaw

According to Coingecko data, as of press time, the current price of ai16z is US$2.17, a 70% increase in 7 days, and the market value is tentatively reported at US$2.4 billion, second only to Base ecological AI Agent token leader VIRTUAL and the old AI concept token FET, ranking AI Third place in the Agent section.

Such an eye-catching performance has naturally brought a lot of attention to Shaw, the developer behind it. In particular, Shaw himself has recently been conducting frequent offline roadshows and communicating closely with community members in different regions. His external voice is also regarded as "one of the important signals in the AI ​​Agent field." The Space online conference that Shaw had previously vigorously promoted to educate on AI Agent development was also regarded as a evangelistic move for "deep integration of AI x Crypto".

Frequently speaking out has brought many fans to Shaw, but it has also become a trigger for conflicts with other project developers.

Relationship diagram of AI Agent Devs

Shaw VS Kye: unabashed mutual dislike

Shaw has also previously criticized swarms developer Kye. On December 21, 2024, he posted: "I really don't like to publicly point out other people's problems. Doing so is a huge risk to our project and will make a lot of people nervous, and I don't want to discourage those who are working hard. developers. But some people steal other people’s work and try to take credit for themselves.”

Shaw posted a post on the Reddit machine learning forum in August 2023, which pointed out that a Github repo may have traces of stealing other people's work, and the repo belongs to Kye, the developer behind Swarms. Someone in the comments section also pointed out that Kye had directly copied and pasted code from a certain code base. "Based on his code submission frequency and code content, Kye most likely generated the code through ChatGPT."

Reddit posts and comment sections broke the news

And this time, Shaw 's criticism of Kye was even more intense than before.

After Shaw's critical tweet was posted, the official X platform account of the swarms project as AI Agent replied: "Can you point out where the code is wrong so that we can solve and fix it?"

Shaw did not show any weakness and directly said to the line: " You are a thief and a liar. People from Princeton University and people like Gwern, a senior member of OpenAI, have proof." The link and screenshot were Kye's previous code that was automatically generated by ChatGPT. Description of the result.

Shaw's line quotes and evidence

Faced with Shaw's doubts, swarms developer Kye changed his previous tit-for-tat and chose a friendly response. "If you have questions about swarms, please submit feedback and we will fix the issue immediately. We are committed to providing a seamless AI Agent building experience for everyone."

When Shaw first criticized Kye on December 22 last year, the latter reacted violently. Kye believes that Shaw's sale of tokens destroyed the project and caused many investors to lose money. He continues to hold swarms and mcs and never sells them. He is the "legitimate place" dedicated to realizing the functionality and practicality of AI Agent. After Shaw blocked his account, Kye posted a taunting post while conducting "identity attacks," believing that Shaw, Eliza, ai16z and other related people and projects were all scams.

Shaw & a16z crypto CTO: "Netizens who have DMed me"

As the founder of the ai16z DAO organizational fund, Shaw has not had much contact with a16z, and the only person in direct contact with a16z is the CTO of a16z Crypto. Previously, Shaw himself had also posted a statement stating: ai16z has nothing to do with a16z, and emphasized that buying related concept tokens is stupid. However, he added in the comment area that "I am also one of the fools", which instead caused users who did not know the truth to further misunderstand the relationship between the two and purchase ai16z related tokens.

In November last year, a16z Crypto Chief Technology Officer Eddy Lazzarin posted on X revealing ongoing conversations between the venture capital institution and ai16z DAO. Previously, Shaw, one of the founders of ai16z, posted on X seeking to contact a16z, and Lazzarin replied: "Check your DM." At that time, ai16z was affected by this news, and its 24-hour increase was close to 44%, with a market value of over US$480 million.

Shaw & Baoskee: Friendly and symbiotic relationship between platform and

project parties

As a "VC-free investment platform", one of daos.fun's masterpieces is ai16z, a community mutual fund. Therefore, the relationship between Shaw and baoskee, the founder of ai16z startup platform daos.fun, is very friendly.

Previously, baoskee had responded positively to the issue of "ai16z token rights", directly platforming ai16z and Shaw himself: "ai16z tokens are indeed mintable, and the minting rights will be controlled by DAO token holders (and protected by veto rights) )...We will conduct a thorough audit on this."

On a certain level, the two can be considered a symbiotic relationship, a grasshopper on a rope.

Shaw & Lucid: Partners who co-founded ai16z

Lucid, another partner of ai16z DAO, is Shaw's "right-hand man" and jointly participated in the creation of ai16z, and also initiated the creation of the Base ecological AI Agent BeffAI.

Previously, Shaw had posted a post looking for developers interested in Eliza Runescape plug-in and agent development. At that time, the person in charge of the project was Lucid.

Shaw & Skely: Supporters and initiators of the ai Pool project

Skely, the founder of the AI ​​Agent project ai Pool (METAV), which raised more than 30,000 SOL in a few hours, is a developer that Shaw sets an example.

When Skely's X platform account was banned after being maliciously reported, Shaw, the founder of ai16z, immediately forwarded messages from community members to show support, and later posted that the aiPool token had been released and Skely was still working hard to recover. X account; no words were spared in supporting the former.

Shaw & KOTO 9 X: One-sided appreciation

KOTOX 9, which had previously issued the AI ​​Meme coin KOTO, was suspected to be the target of Shaw's initial criticism (actually referring to swarms developer Kye), but Shaw later responded and clarified: "It's not him, KOTO 9 Developer." There was a lot of appreciation in his words.

Shaw & Dan Romero: Farcaster ecological construction promoters

In December last year, Shaw wrote: "Farcaster is the future of programmatic applications. Eliza has now integrated Farcaster. And he personally donated value to every Eliza framework developer who embedded AI Agent into the Farcaster ecosystem at that time. $420 in degenai tokens.”

This move naturally received strong support from Farcaster Eco-Co-founder Dan Romero, who replied "LFG" in the comment area.

From this point of view, the two parties are similar to a partnership to some extent.

In addition, Shaw has also actively promoted the close cooperation between ai16z, Eliza and decentralized computing network Aethir, decentralized AI operating system 0G, well-known DEX platform Orca and other projects.

Other Smolworld developers: Shaw's team

In a tweet at the end of last year, when asked in surprise whether he would no longer be involved in Smolworld-related work and instead focus on Eliza and ai16z, Shaw also responded: "Still managing the team, but daily development work is mainly done by lordasado , Koshi and Alextitonis are in charge.”

Summary: AI Agent has no boundaries, but developers have boundaries

As the old saying goes: "Science has no borders, but scientists have different nationalities." Similarly, the project accounts built on the X platform, the smart contracts deployed on the chain, and the corresponding AI Agents have no borders, but countless AI The developers behind Agent may have different boundaries and love-hate relationships.

Although AI Agents in the encryption field still have huge room for improvement compared to mainstream products, AI Agents and developers are still working hard in their own way to promote the continuous development of projects, products, and tracks. As Kye, the developer of swarms, said, "Battle is a zero-sum game in which both sides lose, and only by working together can we create net benefits."