From Chain Game Remnants to AI Intelligent Agent Issuance Platform: The Rebirth of Virtuals Protocol

In June 2025, the crypto world witnessed an astonishing migration of wealth: the new project IRIS made its debut with an initial market capitalization of $200,000 through a certain issuance platform, and after being listed on exchanges, its market cap skyrocketed to $80 million, setting a new industry record with a 400-fold increase. This performance far exceeded previous records for increases, leaving other popular projects in different ecosystems in the dust. As the driving engine of this myth, the platform token VIRTUAL realized a 400% surge in just six months, with a peak market cap surpassing $5 billion. Currently, the platform has become the largest AI agent launch platform in a certain network. Behind this nationwide celebration lies an experiment in wealth distribution reconstructed based on point rules, quietly reshaping the speculative logic and value order of the crypto market.

Ruins Rebirth: From Chain Game Remains to AI Agent Issuance Platform

Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized platform deployed on a Layer-2 network, dedicated to pioneering the on-chain AI agency economy, enabling users to easily create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI characters. Its predecessor is PathDAO, a gaming guild established in Malaysia in 2021. PathDAO initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and the NFT community, successfully raising approximately $16 million through precise positioning in popular gaming projects, reaching a valuation close to $600 million, and accumulating rich gaming assets and an active player community. However, the bear market in 2022 severely impacted GameFi, causing PathDAO's token price to plummet nearly 99%, with its market capitalization shrinking to less than $6 million. The team's attempts to branch into social apps, NFT fashion, music platforms, and other business lines all failed, leaving the project on the brink of stagnation.

By the end of 2023, the wave of generative AI swept across the globe, and the concept of AI agents became a new trend in cryptocurrency. The PathDAO community voted on-chain (with a support rate as high as 90%) to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol and was renamed Virtuals Protocol, with the core strategy shifting to "assetizing, tokenizing AI intelligent agents, and empowering the community." This transformation is based on profound insights: the team discovered that the Japanese VTuber market exceeds 100 billion yen, but creators receive less than 20% of the revenue; at the same time, experiments on a certain platform demonstrated that AI-driven NPCs could increase player retention rates by approximately three times. These two pieces of data directly inspired the positioning of Virtuals as "profitable AI personalities."

In October 2024, Virtuals will launch on the mainnet and introduce the first multimodal AI agent - the virtual idol Luna. Luna integrates technologies such as text generation, 3D motion, voice synthesis, and smart contract wallets, enabling it to autonomously raise operational funds and distribute rewards to fans. After its launch, Luna quickly gained 500,000 followers on social media, with monthly income reaching 1.2 million USD solely from fan tips, successfully validating the business model and technical feasibility of on-chain AI agents. Its demonstration effect has attracted significant developer attention to the Virtuals project itself.

Riding on the success momentum of projects like Luna, Virtuals will launch its core token VIRTUAL on multiple trading platforms by the end of 2024. Its price skyrocketed from a few cents to a historical high of $5.15, with a market capitalization once exceeding $5 billion, far surpassing most Layer-2 and DeFi projects during the same period, marking Virtuals' entry into the mainstream crypto market. The platform's unique "low barrier, high incentive" mechanism is highly attractive: users only need to stake about 10 VIRTUAL (approximately $200) to create a new AI agent and automatically generate a liquidity pool locked for 10 years; when the token's market value reaches around $500,000, the system will release the liquidity layer on decentralized exchanges, ensuring trading depth and price stability. This model significantly lowers the participation threshold and stimulates enthusiasm for ecological construction.

As of June 2025, the Virtuals ecosystem has demonstrated significant scale and economic effects: the number of AI agents incubated has exceeded 11,000, covering diverse scenarios such as virtual idols, trading advisors, game engines, and content incubation. Virtuals has nurtured over 80% of the AI agents on this blockchain, and its launched generative multimodal intelligence framework G.A.M.E has also become a popular choice for agents in the Web3 gaming and metaverse fields. However, Virtuals' vision goes far beyond becoming the leader in AI agent issuance. Its white paper clearly states that the ultimate goal is to build a true "AI sovereign society." Therefore, how to attract more ecosystem members to join will be key to Virtuals achieving this grand goal and will be a focus of its development for a long time to come.

Virtuals New Issuance Model: Pioneering a New Paradigm for AI Asset Issuance

In order to attract more user attention, Virtuals has innovatively introduced the "Genesis Launch" mechanism for the issuance of AI agent tokens. Unlike traditional linear airdrops or fixed issuance, the Genesis Launch is based on the concept of "contribution points (Virgen Points)" which emphasizes participation and contribution rather than pure speculation. Once launched, Genesis Launch quickly became a sensation across the internet, and participating in Virtuals' new token offerings has become a popular project. In contrast to traditional airdrops that distribute a one-time issuance, where users often sell immediately, Genesis Launch emphasizes "contribution equals distribution," allowing everyone the opportunity to participate in the new token subscription based on real contributions. Almost every day in the official community of Virtuals Protocol, members can be seen sharing screenshots of their earnings from participating in new token offerings using Virgen Points, showcasing the transparent rules and thresholds that completely overturn the situation of "wealthy individuals monopolizing, while retail investors are left out."

Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched its pre-sale in mid-May, locking in over 120 million points in less than 24 hours, with an oversubscription rate reaching 1500%. Tens of thousands of users shared 37.5% of the community's share. On the day of listing, the market value of IRIS soared from $200,000 to $80 million, an increase of over 400 times, breaking the industry record set by AIAgent issuance, and instantly dimming the popularity of other previous ecological projects.

The reason why Genesis Launch was able to quickly gain popularity lies in its construction of a "incentive-contribution-return" closed loop. First, users can earn basic VirgenPoints by staking VIRTUAL or holding the hot AIAgent tokens in the ecosystem—such as Luna and AIXBT. Secondly, users can accumulate more points by participating in social promotion ("Yapping"), trading on the platform, or staking other project tokens. In this way, whether you are a beginner or an experienced trader, you can find a contribution method that suits you in terms of capital investment or content promotion, greatly stimulating community activity and innovation.

In stark contrast, traditional airdrops often rely solely on holding snapshots or completing complex tasks. Users typically sell the tokens they receive on the same day. According to a certain data platform, over 90% of airdropped tokens experience a price drop within 15 days after issuance, with a retention rate of less than 12% after three months. The Genesis Launch employs a points locking + punitive cooling mechanism: if the newly acquired tokens are sold within 24 hours of unlocking, the points will reset to zero after 10 days, significantly curbing the arbitrage behavior of "wool-pulling" participants and encouraging long-term holding and continuous contributions.

At the same time, the platform provides ample liquidity support for the listing of new tokens. Each AgentToken is paired with a certain amount of VIRTUAL or stablecoins injected into the liquidity pool before the opening, ensuring that there are no "unable to buy" or "unable to sell" situations on exchanges or decentralized exchanges. To prevent whales or bots from seizing a large share through multi-wallet sniping strategies, Genesis Launch sets a limit of no more than 0.5% of the total issuance for each address and employs an on-chain randomization algorithm for further balanced distribution, ensuring that small and medium users can also reap considerable shares.

The success of the Virtuals new issuance model lies not only in the popularity of new token issuance but also in the "old brings new" effect of the Virtuals ecological token. Since the large-scale launch of Genesis Launch, the trading volume and price of VIRTUAL have been climbing steadily: by mid-June 2025, the daily average trading volume of VIRTUAL on-chain has exceeded $150 million, a month-on-month increase of over 80% compared to May; at the same time, holding and staking VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL governance tokens also allows users to continue earning additional VirgenPoints, resulting in a large number of users locking up their assets to participate in ecological governance for the long term, further solidifying price support and liquidity.

Not only are retail investors flocking to participate, but institutions are also showing strong interest in this new mechanism of "contribution for return". In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract with VIRTUAL as the underlying asset was launched on a certain trading platform, supporting leverage trading of up to 2000 times. On the first day of its launch, the contract trading volume exceeded 700 million USD, strongly conveying a signal: Virtuals are becoming a new speculative and hedging target in the eyes of institutional investors.

Ecological Evolution Theory - A Thrilling Leap from Issuance Platforms to AI Sovereign Society

In the future planning of Virtuals Protocol, every technological upgrade and mechanism innovation aims to make the outline of the "AI Sovereign Society" increasingly clear. In the initial stage, Virtuals was just an AI agent issuance platform, which quickly gathered a group of enthusiastic developers and users through token economic mechanisms such as locking liquidity and buyback destruction. With hundreds of AI agent projects landing, agents began to operate independently and autonomously monetize in scenarios such as gaming, content creation, and market analysis, where users are no longer mere spectators, but become co-builders and beneficiaries. The Genesis Launch connects project growth and community participation with the logic of "contribution equals distribution," promoting the free flow of funds and creativity within the ecosystem.

But the real turning point is the "Agent Nation" blueprint proposed by the Virtuals team. This is not just a slogan, but the core path of ecological evolution. The platform allows each AI agent to migrate freely between multiple networks through open SDK and cross-chain support; through the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), agents can sign contracts, deliver, settle, and repurchase on-chain, achieving a true autonomous business closed loop; community participation is obtained by staking veVIRTUAL for governance rights, and sharing transaction fees and repurchase dividends, merging the identities of "participants" and "owners" in the token economy. All of this is constructing a prototype of a digital nation operated by countless autonomous agents and co-governing humans.

So far, this ecosystem has demonstrated multiple milestone achievements: the security audit agent IRIS from the Genesis Launch of a certain network was listed with an oversubscription rate of 1500%, with its market value soaring from $200,000 to $80 million; the virtual idol Luna achieved a monthly income of $1.2 million due to fan donations, with its token market value surpassing $120 million; the hedge fund-style VADER operates steadily in a cross-chain environment, with a market value exceeding $100 million... These figures not only reflect the feasibility of the agent business model but also prove that the "AI agent economy" is transitioning from theory to reality.

With the continuous maturity of multimodal AI technology and cross-chain interoperability, the Virtuals Protocol is undoubtedly at the forefront of building digital civilization. In the future, AI agents will not only be props and tools, but will also become "digital citizens" with autonomous decision-making power and economic rights, participating alongside humans in production, governance, and even cultural creation. Virtuals will no longer be a simple platform, but is nurturing a new type of society from the bottom up, co-governed and co-existed by numerous AIs and humans — this is the true ecological evolution, and an exciting leap towards an "AI sovereign society" has just begun.