Repeat DeFi Summer? Beta cycle dividends amid the AI ​​Agent craze

Written by: Web3 Farmer Frank

Is AI Agent now in the "2020-2021" boom cycle of DeFi Summer?

"Searching for a sword" is often the most worry-free way to predict - from a data perspective alone, the total value locked (TVL) of DeFi has increased from US$600 million in January 2020 to US$26 billion in December 2020, which is a huge increase in just one year. It has grown more than 40 times, and the market value of the AI ​​​​track is currently US$44 billion, which also means that if it can really replicate the boom cycle of DeFi, the potential market value may exceed US$1 trillion.

So the question is, is AI Agent really going through a "2020-2021" boom cycle similar to DeFi Summer? In addition to AI Memecoin, what other projects will become the driving force of this track boom cycle?

The AI ​​Agent that cooks oil in the fire business cycle

Cookie.fun statistics show that as of January 1, 2025, the overall market value of the AI ​​Agent sector has exceeded US$16.6 billion, with an increase of 53.79% in the past seven days. Against the backdrop of the entire encryption market being in a period of shock, from Virtual to From AI16Z to Arc and other platforms, the AI ​​Agent ecosystem is expanding at an unprecedented rate.

In particular, AI Agent projects driven by Meme culture have quickly become new centers of traffic and attention with their low-threshold currency issuance and transaction processes. Most of them use humorous expressions, highly interactive community culture, and close proximity. The user's communication strategy has greatly lowered the participation threshold for ordinary users and successfully attracted a large number of non-professional users to join.

To put it bluntly, this is actually another cultural rebellion against "VC coins" and a continuation of the Meme narrative. However, combined with AI Agent, it not only lowers the threshold for participation, expands the potential size of the market, but also injects AI × Crypto narrative more inclusive and sustainable.

Including "TAO CAT", which has achieved outstanding growth not long ago, as the result of the collision of the two ecosystem technologies of Virtuals and Bittensor by the Masa team, it has uniquely demonstrated the superiority of self-evolution of AI Agents compared with traditional AI Bots. The core is still Fair distribution and a community-driven economic narrative.

Interestingly, during the writing process, TAOCAT happened to be selected into the new phase of Binance Alpha project, and subsequently its price rose significantly, and MASA was also affected by this and followed the upward trend.

This is easily reminiscent of the prosperity of DeFi Summer: from the initial basic applications of Compound and Uniswap to the later large-scale influx of users and the derivation of more complex on-chain trading strategies, the technical narrative and capital drive intertwined and resonated, and finally formed There is a cyclical boom , so at least the current popularity and market value growth of AI Agents based on AI Memecoin have indeed brought a new round of narrative and imagination space to the encryption industry.

But how far this boom cycle can go? AI Memecoin is just the beginning, and the follow-up depends on whether AI Agent can become the long-term cornerstone of the encryption industry, not just a short-term outlet.

For example, in the current AI Agent landscape, the total market value of the top five exceeds US$7 billion, accounting for nearly 45%. Among them, the market values ​​of the Virtual Ecosystem and AI16Z Ecosystem have reached US$4.65 billion and US$2.37 billion respectively. They have indeed become the leading players in the entire encryption field. Industry benchmark case.

But in essence, the current prosperity of the "AI Agent" track is still dominated by AI Memecoin or issuance platforms. It is still in the early stage of the "equal rights" economic narrative limited to fair asset issuance, and its reach needs to be further deepened. Looking back at the last encryption cycle, we will find that although DeFi has promoted a large amount of funds to pour into the blockchain field, the user threshold of DeFi is still relatively high and requires financial knowledge and operational skills, which to a certain extent limits its large-scale adoption. Widespread scale.

The emergence of AI Agent has opened up a new narrative with lower threshold and higher potential for the encryption field - unlike DeFi, which requires users to actively learn complex financial instruments, AI Agent can directly provide users with personalized and intelligent solutions. services, lowering the threshold for participation.

These are some interesting variables, that is, meeting the needs of more ordinary users through intelligent solutions, making AI Agent not only a technical product, but also a new "equal rights" economic narrative.

As SlowMist founder Yu Xian tweeted: "Another special sense of fragmentation: the final (perhaps) most important role of AI Agent in the Crypto industry is to issue a token to stimulate incentives. In non-Crypto industries, big players They have long been far ahead, including defining some interoperability protocols and making increasingly easy-to-use AI applications, but most of the Crypto industry's attention is still on tokens."

Therefore, AI Agent has indeed entered a boom cycle through AI Memecoin, winning high market recognition and financial attention in this field, and also marking its official entry into a golden era: from a Meme-driven traffic center to a diversified With various application scenarios, from infrastructure improvement to long-term value mining, AI Agent is expected to reshape the landscape of the encryption industry and become the most innovative and influential field in the encryption industry.

“Alpha” and “Beta” of AI Agent

If we trace back to the source, we will find that although the current AI Agent is only a token issuance and imaginative value capture, its real implementation is closely related to the transaction attributes on the chain.

After all, the actual use of AI Agent is far beyond simply issuing coins -as early as in the task-driven AgentGPT processing process, AI Agent has already demonstrated its potential in on-chain trading strategies and other aspects :

Users can customize the overall target task, and then the AI ​​Agent allocates tasks according to its own resources. The overall target task is broken down into small tasks through the transfer and distribution of agent layer tasks, and is continuously executed and corrected according to the target without the need for humans. assist in achieving the overall goal.

To put it bluntly, it is the core vision of "intention-centered". Users only need to know what the results (intentions) they want are, and they do not need to care about the intermediate processes and steps at all . In many cases, the user's intentions are complex. , the expression of intention may not be accurate, but AI trained by a specific model can more accurately identify the user's intention and infer the user's potential purpose and needs based on the user's keyword information.

In this process, combined with highly intelligent AI, AI can play a huge advantage, whether it is natural language input of intentions, judgment of needs, dismantling of goals, calculation of optimal process matching, and execution of operations. Currently, AI has emerged on the market. A large number of intelligent trading projects involving complex cross-chain transactions can efficiently discover the optimal exchange path, allowing users to complete the optimal transaction at the best price in real time.

This is the most imaginative development direction of AI Agent - the real value lies in becoming the interactive application layer of Web3. Users do not need to understand complex systems and can complete all on-chain operations by simply talking to the AI ​​Agent, thus it is expected to become the interactive application layer of Web3. The underlying infrastructure is deeply integrated with blockchain, smart contracts, etc., giving rise to new application forms and business models, bringing a broader imagination to Web3.

Therefore, from a macro perspective, the AI The power is being refocused, which also means that the market is transitioning from random token speculation to the narrative logic of actual technology implementation.

AI Agent is no longer just a hype gimmick, but has truly integrated into industrial logic through value capture mechanisms, such as AI-driven KOLs, revenue generation tools, transaction and Alpha strategy optimization, and the construction of underlying infrastructure . AI technology is changing from entertainment to Sexual narratives are gradually transformed into tools for solving real problems.

Its value is far beyond the currently popular AI Memecoin, but through technological innovation and ecological integration, it truly promotes the evolution and popularization of Web3. From this perspective, AI Agents are not just tools, they may reshape the encryption market. Ecological rules make AI Agents more easily accepted and adopted by mainstream users.

Any track with "long slopes and thick snow" will always have

infrastructure.

In the crypto industry, Alpha is the point and Beta is the surface. Alpha is often difficult to catch, but Beta projects, which are highly deterministic, are much easier to ambush.

The field of AI Agent is no exception. Although Alpha opportunities such as AI Memecoin are difficult to grasp, infrastructure (Infra), as the core of Beta, is an almost obvious value capture opportunity, and the narrative transmission path is extremely clear -despite the explosion of AI Memecoin. Although there is a frenzy of funds and market attention, the pattern of projects that will eventually come out is far from certain. As a "water seller", Infra can almost sit firmly on Diaoyutai by taking advantage of the first-mover ecological advantage.

As mentioned above, from the perspective of the changing role of AI in the blockchain ecosystem, it is being upgraded from a mere tool to a productivity that drives industry change. This can not only serve existing crypto users, but may also attract people by lowering the threshold. Traditional financial users enter the on-chain ecosystem to build a more inclusive and sustainable economic logic:

From elite finance that serves a few people to inclusive finance that serves the majority; from the unsustainability of short-term speculation to the sustainability of long-term growth.

This means that AI Agent Infra is expected to become a key entry point for on-chain application intelligence. It also means that projects in the same track that have not yet been fully priced by the market are likely to hide new room for revaluation, and one of the important directions is data.

As we all know, an important challenge facing AI Agents is how to efficiently mine and utilize high-quality data. It not only determines the AI ​​Agent 's learning ability and decision-making level, but also directly affects its practical application effects and user experience.

Especially for the blockchain ecosystem, Twitter data, Discord data, web crawler data, etc. may hide billions of signals, contain many use cases that can be derived and implemented, and can be fully exploited for personalized mining. —Such as tracking giant whale dynamics, analyzing "Smart Money" transactions, monitoring on-chain address interactions, screening hierarchical and differentiated on-chain users, accurately reaching different player groups, etc.

Therefore, data infrastructure is not only the support for the development of AI Agent, but also the core of its value creation and market promotion. Interestingly, as the current leader of the AI ​​data track, Masa recently built the SN42 data service subsystem on Bittensor. Net and SN59 AI Agent Colosseum are worth mentioning.

AI Agent Colosseum is a big step taken by Masa as a data infra towards the AI ​​Agent platform. It makes the data network no longer abstract, but can empower AI Agents in real time, allowing them to evolve in real time and iterate the powerful rewards of Bittensor. Mechanism allows AI Agents to compete in the Colosseum. Only a few weeks after the Colosseum was launched, it has already attracted the participation of leading AI Agents from the Virtuals and creator.bid ecosystems, including TAO CAT incubated by Masa.

Therefore, in essence, Masa is based on "infrastructure (data) + application scenarios (Colosseum) + token economy (AI Agent)" to attract more users and developers to operate the platform and continuously expand AI Agent business scenarios , stimulate platform activity.

From a larger logic point of view, the narrative path of AI Agent Infra such as Masa is very clear - focusing on the "adaptability" problem of AI agents on the chain and solving the efficiency, stability and intelligence requirements of chain operation. If As this track continues to ferment, it is not only expected to build the infrastructure of the AI ​​ecosystem on the chain, but may also lead to a comprehensive upgrade of the developer ecosystem and user experience.

According to the law of market rotation, the success of Virtual will also push investors to pay attention to projects in the same track with complementary functions, technological innovation or low valuations, especially those with strong ecological construction capabilities and clear narrative direction, so Infra projects like Masa The project undoubtedly forms a natural complementary logic with Virtual's token issuance function.

The improvement of infrastructure and the maturity of technology have enabled AI Agent to move from the uncertain Alpha stage to the profitable and scalable Beta stage. Therefore, from this perspective, Infra projects like Masa are a driving force that cannot be ignored in this process. .

The TAOCAT mentioned above was selected into the new phase of Binance Alpha project, which also adds practical evidence to the logic of my analysis, and further strengthens the idea that when market attention gradually shifts to the AI ​​Agent track, infrastructure projects (such as MASA ) may usher in unexpected value growth opportunities.

In general, this round of AI Agent Infra's popularity is just the beginning. The market demand for on-chain intelligent infrastructure is still expanding rapidly. The performance of Virtual and Masa provides us with a good reference. There may be more in the future. There will be more projects with clear positioning, complementary functions and underexplored valuations that will gradually be discovered by the market. Opportunities for value revaluation are often hidden in the dark lines of subdivisions.

Conclusion

AI Agent is not the end, but the starting point: in the future encryption market, AI Agent is not only a component of the ecosystem, but will also become an important driving force for the advancement of the entire ecosystem.

Infrastructure is the foundation of the ecosystem, and its support is indispensable behind any major trend. Whether it is a pioneer like Virtual or a potential Infra player such as Masa, what they have in common is to use technology and logic to embed their own value into the core of the entire ecosystem. , and it is only a matter of time before the market recognizes this value.