Is the AI Agent experiencing a boom cycle similar to DeFi Summer?

The market capitalization of the AI Agent sector has surpassed $16.6 billion, with a growth rate of up to 53.79% in the past 7 days. From Virtual to AI16Z, and then to platforms like Arc, the AI Agent ecosystem is expanding at an unprecedented speed.

Driven by Meme culture, AI Agent projects have quickly become new centers of traffic and attention with their low-threshold token issuance and trading processes. They significantly lower the participation threshold for ordinary users by using humorous expression, highly interactive community culture, and user-friendly communication strategies, attracting a large number of non-professional users to join.

This is another cultural rebellion against "VC Coin" and a continuation of the Meme narrative. By integrating AI Agents, it not only lowers the participation threshold and expands the potential market size, but also injects more inclusiveness and sustainability into the AI × Crypto narrative.

Recently, the "TAO CAT" that performed brilliantly is the result of the Masa team's collision of the technologies from the Virtuals and Bittensor ecosystems. It showcases the superiority of self-evolution of AI Agents compared to traditional AI Bots, while its core remains an economic narrative driven by fair distribution and community involvement.

After TAOCAT was selected for the new project of a certain trading platform Alpha, its price rose significantly, and MASA also followed suit with an upward trend.

This evokes the prosperous scene of DeFi Summer: from the initial foundational applications to the later influx of large-scale users and the emergence of more complex on-chain trading strategies, the intertwining of technological narratives and capital drives resonates, ultimately resulting in periodic booms. Therefore, at least for now, the popularity and market capitalization growth of AI Agents based on AI Memecoin have brought a new round of narratives and imaginative space to the crypto industry.

How far this economic cycle can go is still uncertain; AI Memecoin is just the beginning. The future will depend more on whether AI Agents can become a long-term cornerstone of the cryptocurrency industry, rather than just a short-term trend.

Currently, the top 5 in the AI Agent landscape have a total market value exceeding 7 billion USD, accounting for nearly 45%. The market values of the Virtual ecosystem and AI16Z ecosystem reach 4.65 billion USD and 2.37 billion USD respectively, becoming benchmark cases in the cryptocurrency sector.

The current prosperity of the "AI Agent" track primarily revolves around AI Memecoins or issuance platforms, situated in the early stage of the "equity" economic narrative of fair asset issuance, requiring further deepening of outreach.

Unlike DeFi, which requires users to actively learn complex financial tools, AI Agent can directly provide personalized and intelligent services for users, lowering the participation threshold. By meeting the needs of more ordinary users through intelligent solutions, AI Agent is not just a technological product, but also a new "equity" economic narrative.

AI Agent enters the economic cycle through AI Memecoin, gaining high recognition and financial attention from the market in this field, marking its formal entry into the golden age: from a Meme-driven traffic center to diversified application scenarios, from improved infrastructure to long-term value mining, AI Agent is expected to reshape the landscape of the crypto industry, becoming the most innovative and influential sector.

The practical uses of AI Agents are far from limited to token issuance. In the task-driven AgentGPT processing flow, AI Agents have demonstrated their potential in areas such as on-chain trading strategies: users can customize overall target tasks, and the AI Agent allocates tasks based on resources, transferring and distributing the overall target task through the agent layer, breaking it down into smaller tasks, continuously executing and correcting according to the goals, without human assistance, ultimately achieving the overall target.

This is the core vision of "intention-centered"; users only need to know the desired outcome (intention) and do not need to worry about the intermediate processes and steps. AI trained on specific models can more accurately identify user intentions and infer users' potential purposes and needs based on keyword information and other data.

With highly intelligent AI, whether it is natural language input of intent, judgment of needs, breakdown of goals, calculation of the optimal process combination, or execution of operations, AI can exert great advantages. A number of intelligent trading projects involving complex cross-chain transactions have emerged in the market, which can efficiently discover the optimal exchange paths, allowing users to complete optimal transactions in real-time at the best prices.

The true value of the AI Agent lies in becoming the interactive application layer of Web3. Users do not need to understand complex systems; they can complete all on-chain operations simply by conversing with the AI Agent. It is expected to become the underlying infrastructure of Web3, deeply integrated with blockchain, smart contracts, and more, giving rise to new application forms and business models, and bringing broader imaginative space to Web3.

AI × Crypto narratives are completing self-iteration at an astonishing speed—from the initial AI Meme craze to gradually shifting towards practical and interactive AI Agents. The market's attention is refocusing, indicating a narrative logic transformation from random token speculation to the actual implementation of technology.

AI agents are no longer just a marketing gimmick; they are truly integrated into industry logic through value capture mechanisms, such as AI-driven KOLs, yield generation tools, trading, and Alpha strategy optimization, as well as the construction of underlying infrastructure. AI technology is gradually shifting from entertaining narratives to being a tool for solving real problems.

AI Agents drive the evolution and popularization of Web3 through technological innovation and ecological integration. They may reshape the ecological rules of the crypto market, making AI Agents easier for mainstream users to accept and adopt.

In the crypto industry, Alpha is the point, Beta is the plane. Alpha is usually difficult to capture, but Beta projects with high certainty are easier to ambush.

The AI Agent field is no exception. Although opportunities like AI Memecoin are difficult to grasp, infrastructure (Infra) serves as the core of Beta and is almost a clear value capture opportunity, with a very clear narrative transmission path. Despite the explosive rise of AI Memecoin drawing a frenzy of capital and market attention, the final landscape of projects that can emerge is far from certain. However, as the "water seller," Infra can almost secure a spot on the fishing platform by leveraging its first-mover ecological advantages.

The role of AI in the blockchain ecosystem is evolving from a mere tool to a productive force driving industry transformation. It can not only serve existing crypto users but may also attract traditional financial users into the on-chain ecosystem by lowering barriers, constructing a more inclusive and sustainable economic logic: moving from elitist finance that serves a few to inclusive finance that serves the majority; transitioning from the unsustainability of short-term speculation to the sustainability of long-term growth.

AI Agent Infra is expected to become a key entry point for the intelligence of on-chain applications. Projects in the same track that have not been fully priced by the market may hide new value reassessment opportunities, one important direction of which is data.

One of the important challenges faced by AI Agents is how to efficiently mine and utilize high-quality data. This not only determines the learning ability and decision-making level of the AI Agent, but also directly affects its actual application effectiveness and user experience.

For the blockchain ecosystem, Twitter data, Discord data, web crawler data, etc. may hide billions of signals, containing many use cases that can be derived and realized, which can be completely personalized for mining and utilization — such as tracking whale movements, analyzing "Smart Money" trades, monitoring on-chain address interactions, filtering layered differentiated on-chain users, and accurately reaching different player groups.

Data infrastructure is not only the support for the development of AI Agents, but also the core of value creation and market promotion. As a leader in the current AI data sector, the SN42 data service subnet and SN59 AI Agent arena built by Masa on Bittensor recently deserve a mention.

The AI Agent Arena is a significant step for Masa towards the AI Agent platform as a data infrastructure, making the data network no longer abstract but capable of empowering AI Agents in real-time, allowing them to evolve continuously and iterate on Bittensor's powerful reward mechanism, enabling AI Agents to compete in the arena. Just a few weeks after its launch, the Arena attracted top AI Agents from the Virtuals and creator.bid ecosystems, including the TAO CAT incubated by Masa.

Masa is essentially centered around "infrastructure (data) + application scenarios (battle arena) + token economy (AI Agent)", attracting more users and developers to operate the platform, continuously expanding the AI Agent business scenarios and stimulating platform vitality.

The narrative path of AI Agent Infra like Masa is very clear — focusing on the "adaptability" issues of AI agents on the chain, addressing the efficiency, stability, and intelligent demands of on-chain operations. If this track continues to ferment, it is expected not only to build the infrastructure for the on-chain AI ecosystem but also to drive a comprehensive upgrade of the developer ecosystem and user experience.

According to the market rotation rules, the success of a certain ecosystem will also drive investors to focus on functionally complementary, technologically innovative, or undervalued projects in the same sector, especially those with strong ecosystem-building capabilities and clear narrative directions. Projects like Masa, which are Infra projects, undoubtedly form a natural complementary logic with certain token issuance functions.

The improvement of infrastructure and the maturity of technology have allowed AI Agents to transition from the uncertain Alpha stage to the profitable and scalable Beta stage. Therefore, from this perspective, Infra projects like Masa are indispensable drivers in this process.

TAOCAT has been selected for the latest project of a trading platform Alpha, adding real-world evidence to this analytical logic and further strengthening the possibility that infrastructure projects (such as MASA) may encounter unexpected value growth opportunities as market attention gradually shifts towards the AI Agent track.

The current heat around AI Agent Infra is just the beginning; the market's demand for on-chain intelligent infrastructure is still rapidly expanding. The performance of a certain ecosystem and Masa provides a good reference. Going forward, there may be more projects with clear positioning, complementary functions, and valuations not fully tapped being gradually discovered by the market. Opportunities for value reassessment often lie hidden in the dark corners of niche fields.

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

Infrastructure is the ecological foundation, and any major trend cannot do without its support. Whether it's a pioneer like a certain ecosystem or potential players like Masa and others in Infra, their commonality lies in embedding their value into the core of the entire ecosystem through technology and logic. The market's recognition of this value is just a matter of time.