The Transformation of Virtuals Protocol: From the Ruins of Chain Games to a New Star in AI Agent Issuance

In June 2025, the crypto market witnessed an unprecedented wealth feast: the new project IRIS debuted with an initial market value of $200,000 through a certain issuance platform, and after going live, its market value soared to $80 million, setting a new industry record with a 400-fold increase. This performance not only far exceeded the previous record of 40-fold increase but also made the "small coin season" of a certain ecosystem pale in comparison. As the driving force behind this miracle, the platform token VIRTUAL achieved a staggering 400% surge within six months, with its market value peak surpassing $5 billion. Today, this 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.

Phoenix Nirvana: From Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Platforms

Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized platform deployed on a Layer-2 network, dedicated to pioneering an on-chain AI agent economy that allows users to easily create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI characters. Its predecessor was a gaming guild established in Malaysia in 2021. The guild initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and the NFT community, successfully raising approximately $16 million through precise positioning in multiple popular gaming projects, reaching a valuation of nearly $600 million at one point, and accumulating a wealth of gaming assets and an active player community. However, the bear market in 2022 severely impacted GameFi, causing the guild's token price to plummet by nearly 99%, with its market value shrinking to less than $6 million. The team attempted multiple business lines, all of which failed, leaving the project on the brink of stagnation.

By the end of 2023, the generative AI wave swept the globe, and the concept of AI agents became a new trend in cryptocurrency. The guild community decided to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol through on-chain DAO voting and renamed itself to Virtuals Protocol, shifting its core strategy to "assetizing and tokenizing AI agents and empowering the community." This transformation is based on profound insights: the team discovered that a certain market in Japan has a scale of over 100 billion yen, yet creators receive less than 20% of the revenue; at the same time, experiments on a certain gaming platform proved that AI-driven NPCs can increase player retention rates by approximately three times. These two pieces of data directly gave rise to Virtuals' positioning as "profitable AI personalities."

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

Riding on the success of projects like Luna, Virtuals is set to launch its core token VIRTUAL on multiple trading platforms by the end of 2024. Its price skyrocketed from an initial few cents to a historical high of $5.15, with a market cap briefly 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, which automatically generates a liquidity pool locked for 10 years; when the market cap of the token reaches around $500,000, the system will release the liquidity layer, ensuring trading depth and price stability. This model significantly lowers the participation threshold and stimulates enthusiasm for ecosystem development.

By June 2025, the Virtuals ecosystem has demonstrated significant scale and economic effects: the total 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 chain, and its launched generative multimodal agent framework G.A.M.E has also become a popular choice for agents in the Web3 gaming and metaverse fields. However, Virtuals' vision is 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, attracting more ecosystem members to join is 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 issuances, the Genesis Launch is based on the concept of "contribution points (Virgen Points)", emphasizing participation and contribution rather than pure speculation. Once launched, the Genesis Launch quickly became a sensation across the internet, and now Virtuals has become a new hotspot for speculators eager to participate in new token offerings, with even seasoned speculators discussing how it could replace the once-popular "Alpha airdrop" model. Unlike traditional airdrops which distribute tokens in a lump sum, often leading users to sell immediately, the Genesis Launch places greater emphasis on "contribution equals distribution", giving everyone the opportunity to participate in new token subscriptions based on their genuine contributions. Almost every day in the official community of the Virtuals Protocol, members can be seen sharing screenshots of their earnings from participating in new token offerings with Virgen Points, completely overturning the situation of "wealthy individuals monopolizing, while retail investors are left out" through its open and transparent rules and thresholds.

Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched its presale in mid-May, locking over 120 million points in less than 24 hours, with subscriptions exceeding 1500%. Tens of thousands of users shared 37.5% of the community share. On the day of listing, the market value of IRIS skyrocketed from $200,000 to $80 million, an increase of over 400 times, setting a new industry record for the issuance of AI Agents, and instantly dimming the previous "small coin season" trend of a certain ecosystem.

The reason why Genesis Launch can quickly become popular lies in its construction of a "incentive-contribution-return" closed loop. First, users can earn basic Virgen Points by staking VIRTUAL or holding popular AI Agent tokens within the ecosystem, such as Luna and AIXBT. Secondly, users can also accumulate more points by participating in social promotion ("Yapping"), trading on the platform, or staking tokens from other projects. In this way, whether you are a technical novice or an experienced trader, you can find a suitable way to contribute through financial 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, and users tend to sell the tokens they receive on the same day. According to data from a certain platform, over 90% of airdrop tokens experience a price drop within 15 days of issuance, with a holding rate of less than 12% after three months. In comparison, Genesis Launch employs a point locking + punitive cooling mechanism: if the newly acquired tokens are sold within 24 hours of unlocking, it will trigger a 10-day point zeroing, significantly curbing the arbitrage behavior of "wool-pulling" participants, making them more inclined to hold long-term and contribute continuously.

At the same time, the platform provides ample liquidity support for the listing of new tokens. Each Agent Token is paired with a certain amount of VIRTUAL or stablecoins injected into the liquidity pool before the opening, ensuring that there is no awkward situation of "unable to buy at price" or "unable to sell order" on the trading platform. To prevent large investors or bots from seizing a large share through multi-wallet sniper layouts, 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 to further balance distribution, ensuring that small and medium users can also gain a considerable share.

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 ecosystem token. Since the large-scale launch of Genesis Launch, the trading volume and price of VIRTUAL have been rising steadily: by mid-June 2025, the daily average trading volume of VIRTUAL on-chain has exceeded $150 million, an 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 Virgen Points, leading a large number of users to lock up assets and participate in ecological governance for the long term, further solidifying price support and liquidity.

Not only are retail investors flocking to participate, but institutions have also shown strong interest in this new mechanism of "contribution for returns." In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract based on VIRTUAL was launched on a trading platform, supporting leverage trading of up to 2000 times. On the first day of its launch, the contract's 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: The Thrilling Leap from Issuance Platforms to AI Sovereign Societies

In the future planning of Virtuals Protocol, each technological upgrade and mechanism innovation is aimed at making the outline of the "AI Sovereign Society" increasingly clear. In the initial stage, Virtuals was merely an AI agent issuance platform, quickly gathering a group of enthusiastic developers and users through token economic mechanisms such as locking liquidity, buyback, and burning. As hundreds of AI agent projects were launched, agents began to operate independently and autonomously monetize in scenarios such as gaming, content creation, and market analysis. Users were no longer just spectators, but became co-builders and beneficiaries. The Genesis Launch connected 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 across multiple networks through the open SDK and cross-chain support; through the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), agents can sign contracts, deliver, settle, and repurchase on-chain, achieving a truly autonomous business closed loop; community participation is obtained through 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 building a prototype of a digital nation operated by countless autonomous agents and co-governing humans.

So far, this ecosystem has demonstrated several milestone achievements: the security audit agent IRIS in a certain mainnet Genesis Launch was listed with a subscription rate of 1500%, and its market value soared from $200,000 to $80 million; the virtual idol Luna earned $1.2 million per month through fan donations, with its token market value exceeding $120 million; the hedge fund format VADER operates steadily in a cross-chain environment, with a market value exceeding $100 million... These data not only reflect the feasibility of the agent business model but also prove that the "AI agent economy" is moving 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 days to come, AI agents will not only be props and tools but will also become "digital citizens" with autonomous decision-making power and economic rights, participating together with 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 ground up, co-governed by countless AIs and humans—this is true ecological evolution, and a thrilling leap towards an "AI sovereign society" has just begun.