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

Data shows that the total locked value in DeFi grew from 600 million dollars in January 2020 to 26 billion dollars in December 2020, increasing 40 times in a year. The current market value of the AI sector is about 44 billion dollars; if it can replicate the growth trajectory of DeFi, its potential market value may exceed 1 trillion dollars. So, is the AI Agent really experiencing a similar boom cycle? Besides AI Memecoin, what other projects could become the driving force in this sector?

The Rapid Development of AI Agents

As of January 1, 2025, the overall market value of the AI Agent sector has surpassed $16.6 billion, with a growth rate of up to 53.79% over the past 7 days. Against the backdrop of fluctuations in the entire cryptocurrency market, platforms such as Virtual, AI16Z, and Arc are witnessing the AI Agent ecosystem expand at an astonishing rate.

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

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

A recent standout example is "TAO CAT". As a product of the Masa team utilizing the technologies of the Virtuals and Bittensor ecosystems, it showcases the advantages of AI Agents in self-evolution compared to traditional AI Bots, with the core still being a narrative of fair distribution and community-driven economy.

It is worth noting that TAOCAT has just been selected for a new round of projects on a certain trading platform, followed by a significant increase in its price, while MASA has also shown a following trend as a result.

This inevitably brings to mind the prosperous scene of DeFi Summer: from the initial basic applications to the later massive influx of users and the emergence of more complex on-chain trading strategies, the intertwining resonance of technological narratives and capital drives ultimately forms a cyclical prosperity. Therefore, at least in the current context, the popularity and market cap growth of AI Agents based on AI Memecoin indeed bring a new round of narratives and imaginative space to the crypto industry.

However, how far this economic cycle can go depends on whether AI Agents can become a long-term cornerstone of the crypto industry, rather than just a short-term trend.

Currently, the total market capitalization of the top 5 in the AI Agent landscape exceeds $7 billion, accounting for nearly 45%. Among them, a certain ecosystem and another ecosystem have market capitalizations of $4.65 billion and $2.37 billion respectively, truly becoming benchmark cases in the entire cryptocurrency field.

However, essentially, the current prosperity of the "AI Agent" sector is still dominated by AI Memecoins or issuance platforms, remaining in the early stages of the "equity" economic narrative limited to fair asset issuance, and further deepening its outreach is needed.

Looking back at the last crypto cycle, we find that although Decentralized Finance has driven a substantial influx of funds into the blockchain space, its user threshold remains relatively high, requiring financial knowledge and operational skills, which to some extent limits its widespread adoption.

The emergence of AI Agents has opened a new narrative in the crypto space with lower barriers to entry and higher potential. Unlike DeFi, which requires users to actively learn complex financial tools, AI Agents can directly provide personalized and intelligent services to users, reducing the entry threshold.

These are some interesting variables that meet the needs of more ordinary users through intelligent solutions, making the AI Agent not just a technical product, but a brand new "equity" economic narrative.

Therefore, the AI Agent has indeed entered a prosperous cycle through the AI Memecoin, gaining high recognition and attention from the market in this field, marking its formal entry into a golden era: from the Meme-driven traffic center to diversified application scenarios, from the improvement of infrastructure to the exploration of long-term value, the AI Agent is expected to reshape the landscape of the cryptocurrency industry, becoming the most innovative and influential field in the crypto industry.

AI Agent's "Alpha" and "Beta"

Tracing back to the source, we will find that although the current AI Agent is merely a capture of the value of token issuance and imagination, its real implementation is still closely related to the attributes of on-chain transactions.

The practical applications of AI Agents go far beyond just issuing tokens. As early as the task-driven process of AgentGPT, AI Agents have already demonstrated their potential in areas such as on-chain trading strategies:

Users can customize the overall target tasks, and then the AI Agent allocates tasks based on its own resources. The overall target tasks are transformed and distributed through the agent layer, broken down into smaller tasks, and continuously executed and corrected according to the goals, without human assistance, ultimately achieving the overall target.

In simple terms, it is a core vision that is "intention-centered". Users only need to know what their desired outcome (intention) is, without having to worry about the processes and steps in between. In many cases, the user's intention is complex, and the expression of intention may not be accurate. However, AI trained with specific models can more accurately identify user intentions and infer the user's potential purposes and needs based on keyword information and other factors.

In this process, combined with highly intelligent AI, whether it is the natural language input of intent, or judging requirements, breaking down goals, calculating optimal process combinations, and executing operations, AI can exert tremendous advantages. Currently, a large number of intelligent trading projects involving complex cross-chain transactions have emerged in the market, capable of efficiently discovering the optimal exchange paths, allowing users to complete optimal trades in real-time at the best prices.

This is the truly imaginative direction for the development of AI Agents—the real value lies in becoming the interactive application layer of Web3, where users do not need to understand complex systems, but can simply interact with AI Agents to complete all on-chain operations. This holds the potential to become the underlying infrastructure of Web3, deeply integrating with blockchain, smart contracts, and more, giving rise to new forms of applications and business models, and bringing broader imaginative possibilities to Web3.

From a macro perspective, the rapidly evolving AI × Crypto narrative is undergoing self-iteration at an astonishing speed—from the initial AI Meme craze to the gradual shift towards practical and interactive AI Agents. The entire market's attention is refocusing, which also signifies a narrative logic transformation from random token speculation to actual technology implementation.

AI Agents are no longer just a hype, but have truly integrated into industrial 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 transforming from an entertaining narrative into a tool for solving real problems.

Its value goes far beyond the currently popular AI Memecoin, but rather through technological innovation and ecological integration, it truly promotes the evolution and popularization of Web3. From this perspective, AI Agents are not merely tools; they may reshape the ecological rules of the crypto market, making AI Agents easier for mainstream users to accept and adopt.

The Importance of Infrastructure

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

The AI Agent field is no exception. Although opportunities like AI Memecoin are difficult to grasp, infrastructure (Infra) as the core of Beta is almost a clear-cut value capture opportunity, with an extremely clear narrative transmission path. Despite the explosive rise of AI Memecoin stirring up a frenzy of funding and market attention, the ultimate project landscape that can emerge is far from certain. However, as the "water seller," Infra can almost sit steadily on the fishing platform, leveraging its first-mover ecological advantage.

From the perspective of the role of AI in the blockchain ecosystem, it is transforming from a mere tool to a productive force driving industry change. This not only serves existing crypto users but may also attract traditional financial users into the on-chain ecosystem by lowering barriers, building a more inclusive and sustainable economic logic.

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

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

As we all know, one important challenge faced by AI Agents is how to efficiently mine and utilize high-quality data, which not only determines the learning ability and decision-making level of the AI Agent but also directly affects its practical application effectiveness and user experience.

Especially 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 personalized for mining and utilization—such as tracking whale movements, analyzing "Smart Money" trades, monitoring on-chain address interactions, filtering differentiated on-chain users, accurately reaching different player groups, and so on.

Therefore, data infrastructure is not only the support for the development of AI Agents but also the core of value creation and market promotion. Interestingly, as a leader in the current AI data track, the SN42 data service subnet and SN59 AI Agent Arena built by Masa on a certain ecosystem not long ago are quite worth mentioning.

The AI Agent Arena is a significant step for Masa towards the AI Agent platform as data infra, making the data network no longer abstract but enabling AI Agents in real-time, allowing them to evolve and iterate with a powerful reward mechanism of a certain ecosystem, letting AI Agents compete in the arena. The arena has only been online for a few weeks and has already attracted top AI Agents from a certain ecosystem and another ecosystem, including the TAO CAT incubated by Masa.

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

From a broader perspective, 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 intelligence needs of on-chain operations. If this track continues to ferment, it is not only expected to build the infrastructure for the on-chain AI ecosystem but may also drive a comprehensive upgrade of the developer ecosystem and user experience.

According to the market rotation law, the success of a certain ecosystem will also drive investors to pay attention to projects in the same track that have complementary functions, technological innovations, or low valuations, especially those with strong ecosystem building capabilities and clear narrative directions. Therefore, Infra projects like Masa undoubtedly form a connection with the token issuance function of a certain ecosystem.