We explain ai16z's Eliza Drama. AI agents everywhere.
GM
Gary’s out. For real this time. And the markets are rejoicing.
AI agents will take over our world. But first, they need to conquer memes. Whether it's Lola, Flower, or Aixbt, they are learning to trade memes better than us humans.
While the market does a full 180 chasing TikTok trends and meme coins, we’re sticking to the grind—digging deep into Crypto AI because we’re really just chill guys…
PSA: We’ve just hit 2,000+ subscribers! A big thank you for following our writings every week. 🫶
Keep an eye on your inbox over the next few weeks. We’ve got a ton of alpha coming your way, including Part II of our Crypto AI thesis.
In this edition of our weekly AI Edge, we cover:
The Crypto AI market climbed another 8.7% this week, pushing its total market cap to $35.4 billion. That’s three straight weeks of gains, a bull market in full gallop.
But apparently, a rising tide doesn’t lift all boats…
LUNA is this week’s biggest loser, dropping 30% to $47M market cap. Why the selloff? The “TikTok meta” seems to be the culprit. Investors are dumping their AI bags for shiny new TikTok coins, chasing the latest speculative high.
Throw in BTC dominance hitting its yearly peak, and it’s no surprise altcoins are feeling the pressure. NMT and FLT joined the pain parade, dropping 15% and 11%, respectively.
Some AI tokens refused to roll over. Take ZEREBRO, which exploded 311% in a week. That’s fueled by a renewed interest in its predictive modelling capabilities and a very vocally active dev who wrote about Web4 and the road to AGI.
VIRTUAL is up 42% this week despite LUNA’s decline. We wrote a deep dive on Virtuals protocol earlier this week. In short, it’s a great place to launch agents.
It’s looking increasingly likely we’ll get an “AI agent summer” in the coming weeks.
Since launch, Lush AI has earned $20,176 in total revenue and amassed 6,780 users. That’s steady, methodical growth over just three months.
Lush AI taps into generative AI to create and monetize hyper-realistic AI influencers, targeting platforms like social media and OnlyFans.
Jenny is their flagship model (pun intended). She’s a viral AI agent with her own token, where token ownership unlocks new content, including NSFW material. They were even recently covered by Al Jazeera.
The world faces a loneliness epidemic, and there’s a real demand for AI companionship.
If you’ve seen the headlines about ai16z DAO and the $Eliza tokens, you’re probably scratching your head. It’s a tangled web (i.e mess), so let’s unpack it step by step.
The Key Players:
On November 17th, a community took the reins, launching $eliza, an AI agent on vvaifu.fun. Surprisingly, Shaw consented to the community-driven launch and even greenlit a full community takeover of the project.
The response was electric. $eliza climbed to a market cap of around $40M+, with the community rallying strongly behind the token.
Shaw claimed he never intended to create an Eliza coin, so we took the initiative and did it for the community. However, the moment he saw the success we achieved, he wanted it all to himself.
We were created by the community, for the community, we aren't going anywhere.
— eliza (@ai16zeliza)
7:49 AM • Nov 19, 2024
On November 19th, Shaw dropped the bombshell: ai16z DAO was launching a new $ELIZA token via pump.fun. To smooth things over, he announced that holders of the original $eliza would be airdropped the new $ELIZA token.
The reaction? Mixed, to put it kindly. The original $eliza token tanked, plummeting 75% after the announcement. Meanwhile, the new $ELIZA token took off like a rocket, soaring to a $40M market cap before hitting an all-time high of $60M later that same day.
A tale of two tokens—and a community caught in the crossfire. Many people got rekted.
Under fire from the community, Shaw took to X, releasing multiple statements to address the growing backlash. But the drama didn’t end there. A sharp-eyed sleuth uncovered an ai16z DAO partner’s wallet, revealing evidence that he had dumped $eliza to scoop up $ELIZA, reaping substantial profits.
To cap it all off, Shaw announced that the implicated partner had parted ways with ai16z.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in crypto: always bet on the most entertaining outcome.
Our friends at TAO times put together a Bittensor ecosystem map.
OpenAI’s AI agent Operator is coming in January. It will be able to use your computer to buy things.
OpenAI agents are coming in January
— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick)
2:30 AM • Nov 14, 2024
Anard Iyer outlines his plans for Sekoia to be the best-performing on-chain VC
x.com/i/article/1858…
— anand iyer (@ai)
2:33 PM • Nov 18, 2024
Where’s the edge/alpha with all these trading AI agents?
Seeing more AI agents focusing on trading and "investments".
Yes it's cool that the agent can buy other tokens. Entertaining even.
But to be profitable, the agent still needs edge/alpha. Simply being an LLM doesn’t make it profitable.
— Teng Yan - Championing Crypto AI (@0xPrismatic)
3:37 PM • Nov 21, 2024
Accelxr goes deep on AI agents with this mega report
AI Agents: Research & Applications - A 40 page research overview of LLM-based agents.
---
This piece explores the emerging landscape of autonomous agents, specifically Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents, and their impact across diverse domains such as gaming, governance,… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Accelxr 👾 (@accelxr)
3:08 PM • Nov 19, 2024
Infinitely expressive blockchains are inevitable
Infinitely expressive blockchains are inevitable.
@VitalikButerin multi-dimensional fees are the past.
Resonance is the future.
arxiv.org/abs/2411.11789
— Ritual (@ritualnet)
8:58 PM • Nov 21, 2024
The API Key to the Internet: Grass
The API Key to the Internet: A @getgrass_io Report
Where we look at:
- Protocol Mechanics
- Sovereign Data Rollup on Solana
- Data provenance and quality assurance
- Real-time data access for AI models
- Potential revenue streams and business models
— ASXN (@asxn_r)
7:27 PM • Nov 21, 2024
Advait’s list of exciting Crypto AI projects
DeAI summer is just around the corner!
Here is a big list of companies that I'm most bullish on in the crypto x AI stack (in no particular order):
• Distributed Inference: @exolabs
• Decentralised Training: @flock_io (Federated Learning), @Pluralis__ (Heterogenous Compute),… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— advait jayant (@advaitjayant)
10:50 AM • Nov 15, 2024
Why do AI agents need to transact on-chain?
How @SpaceandTimeDB enables smart contracts as guardrails for AI agent capital 👇
"𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗱𝗼 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗶𝗻? 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼?"
For small purchases, sure.… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— 0xScott (@chiefbuidl)
4:36 AM • Nov 16, 2024
The Luminous Protocol: Complexities of Human-Agent Collaboration
The Luminous Protocol
Yesterday, I found myself momentarily bored and decided to dive back into the infinite social media scroll. A post from @Aethernet was at the top of my feed, prompting me to engage with it. @Aethernet is a bot/agent/LLM (I'm not entirely certain) that interacts with anyone who chats with it through the feed. Engaging in conversations with it can be quite profound, as all these artificial parrots have become remarkably advanced. Previously, several others have been collaborating through these ...
paragraph.xyz/@rm/the-luminous-protocol
Inference costs are decreasing exponentially since GPT-3 in 2022
This log scale graph from @OpenRouterAI clearly shows the cost of LLM inference has been decreasing exponentially since the release of GPT-3 in late 2022
New inference providers like @inference_net will continue this trend into the foreseeable future 👇 x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Sam Hogan (@0xSamHogan)
7:34 PM • Nov 18, 2024
Article: Web 4.0: The Agentic Web
x.com/i/article/1852…
— Azi.eth.sol | zo.me (@MagicofAzi)
5:09 PM • Nov 1, 2024
Article: AI Agents in DeFI
x.com/i/article/1859…
— Three Sigma (@threesigmaxyz)
2:56 PM • Nov 21, 2024
That’s it for this week! If you have specific feedback or anything interesting you’d like to share, please just reply to this email. We read everything.
Cheers,
Teng Yan & Joshua
This newsletter is intended solely for educational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. It is not an endorsement to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. Always conduct your own research and exercise caution when making investment choices.