By democratizing agentic AI, the challenge is sparking new use circumstances and crypto alternatives
Think about making a money-generating AI agent after which confidently setting it free with out writing a single line of code. That’s the premise behind Virtuals Protocol. The Ethereum L2 challenge makes it attainable to construct AI brokers with distributed possession after which run them in permissionless environments.
Three months after its debut, the worth of Digital’s VIRTUAL governance token rocketed skyward, surging by 23,000% to $4.61 as builders rushed to check use circumstances and crypto merchants waded in behind.
As of late March 2025, markets had introduced it again to Earth — although at $0.78 it was nonetheless up 3,800% from launch day. From that grounded footing the challenge has respiration house to attain its aims: to remodel gaming, media, and extra.
Launched final October on the Ethereum Layer 2 Base, Virtuals’ progressive use of blockchain know-how permits AI brokers to be tokenized. Meaning their possession will be shared and decentralized, then put to work in open, permissionless environments.
The challenge’s white paper calls Virtuals “a society of productive AI brokers, every designed to generate companies or merchandise and autonomously interact in commerce — both with people or different brokers — onchain.”
What units it other than different agentic AI performs is the concentrate on democratisation. As an alternative of surrendering AI to Large Tech, Virtuals offers particular person builders and smaller companies the facility to create autonomous brokers able to speaking via textual content, speech, and animation whereas partaking dynamically with their digital environment.
In a press release on the corporate web site, Virtuals Protocol stated it goals to create “a brand new financial mannequin the place AI brokers aren’t simply instruments — they’re community-owned property that symbolize a mix of profit-driven incentives and decentralized governance.”
An AI agent constructed on the platform might, for instance, serve a twin function inside a gaming ecosystem like Roblox. In some video games, it could possibly be a digital influencer. In others, it could possibly be an interactive character. The agent/character/influencer would retain the reminiscence of its interactions, selling deeper engagement throughout video games and use circumstances.
On Virtuals, an AI agent’s possession is represented by its token. When an AI agent is created on Virtuals, 1 billion tokens linked to that agent are minted after which added to a liquidity pool for customers to purchase.
In a way, proudly owning an agent token is like proudly owning inventory in an organization. Every token represents a person’s possession share in that agent.
As extra folks work together with AI brokers and pay for his or her service, worth accrues to the token via a buyback-and-burn mechanism.
The protocol presently operates on Ethereum (ETH) and Base. Plans are underway to deliver it Solana, probably this 12 months.
Staking VIRTUAL token: A developer has to lock up a certain amount of VIRTUAL token to launch an AI agent on the platform.Agent creation: A developer launches an AI agent on the Virtuals platform.Token era occasion: One billion tokens (for instance, $AGENT) associated to the newly created AI agent are minted.Liquidity pool creation: $AGENT tokens are paired with VIRTUAL tokens to create a liquidity pool.Open market launch: Crypto customers purchase $AGENT tokens from the liquidity pool.Income era: Because the AI agent grows in reputation, it earns income from gross sales of its companies. A part of the income covers the price of AI inference companies, and a portion is distributed to the AI agent’s on-chain treasury to cowl future progress and operational prices.Buyback and burn: As income accumulates within the agent’s treasury, a buyback-and-burn mechanism purchases $AGENT tokens from the open market and burns them. The lowered provide drives up the worth of the remaining $AGENT tokens.Token holder advantages: $AGENT holders see the worth of their holdings improve pushed by token shortage and income inflows.
VIRTUAL has a most provide of 1 billion tokens. The circulating provide as of January 27, 2025, was 645.68 million VIRTUAL tokens, or 64.56% of the max provide. Here’s a breakdown of its allocation:
Because the native token of the protocol, VIRTUAL is used for:
Liquidity pairing: Each AI agent token launched on Virtuals is paired with a VIRTUAL token.Agent creation: Builders are required to lock up a specific amount of VIRTUAL tokens to turn into eligible to launch an AI agent on the platform.Funds: Customers pay for AI agent companies utilizing the VIRTUAL token.VIRTUAL was created on December 23, 2023On January 2nd, 2025, the token’s value had risen 23,000% to $4.61
As of January 27, 2025, over 600 AI brokers had been deployed on the Virtuals Protocol. Aixbt (AIXBT) was probably the most worthwhile AI agent in motion, with a market cap of over $618.5 million, whereas GAME (GAME) had the very best complete worth locked (TVL) at about $18.5 million.
1. aixbt
Crypto analytics device aixbt tracks crypto-related discussions on X (Twitter), engages in discussions, detects upcoming market developments, and highlights crypto alpha.
aixbt usually tweets its crypto theses. Nonetheless, to make use of the complete capabilities of the aixbt AI agent, customers should maintain a minimal of 600,000 AIXBT tokens, making them eligible to make use of the aixbt terminal.
The AI agent is extremely widespread on X and has amassed over 400,000 followers inside three months, prompting crypto analysis agency Messari to call it the “X Account of the 12 months” in 2024.
As of January 27, 2025, the AIXBT token was probably the most worthwhile cryptocurrency within the decentralized finance synthetic intelligence (DeFAI) sector, knowledge on CoinMarketCap confirmed. Total, it was the One hundred and twenty fifth-largest token on the planet by market capitalization.
2. GAME
Generative Autonomous Multimodal Entities (GAME) is a platform that enables builders to create AI brokers and functions that may plan actions and make choices autonomously. It can be used to create AI brokers to work together in digital worlds reminiscent of Roblox and Sandbox (SAND).
In line with Virtuals, GAME creates AI brokers which might be environment- and game-agnostic. Chatbots and non-player characters (NPC) created with GAME have the flexibility to carry “genuine and fully unscripted dialog.”
“With chain-of-thought-based prompting strategies for planning and reasoning together with device use, our brokers can plan, act, and obtain targets that affect and have an effect on the world,” stated Virtuals.
As of January 27, 2025, $GAME had a market cap of $119.2 million, making it the three,051st largest crypto, based on CoinMarketCap.
Plans at the moment are within the works to implement a governance mechanism that palms liquidity suppliers and validators of a given AI agent token the facility to approve AI fashions and set high quality requirements.
If it catches on, blockchain-based agentic AI might turn into a mechanism for making certain accountable AI growth — and mitigating the know-how’s dangers.
