The AI hype is just getting started. Nvidia was one of the first mainstream companies to capitalize on this trend. Right when it established a foothold in the market, its GPU chips started selling like hot pancakes.
The ripple effect? The company’s financials started improving, and lo and behold, in no time it became the world’s most valuable company.
In his recent CES 2025 keynote, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang declared the rise of “Agentic AI.” He said that this shift will create a multi-trillion-dollar industry and change how people work.
He exclaimed,
“The age of AI Agentics is here. [It’s] a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity.”
Since we’re anyway on the AI agent subject, you must’ve seen the blocmates crew yap about this day in and out. But, if you’ve missed hopping on to the bandwagon and are clueless about the nitty-gritty of the current AI agent infrastructure, then Krix has gotcha covered.
Distilling it down
The rise of TAO and other AI-related coins has been a positive antidote to the otherwise memecoin-dominated market. But if one endeavor really kicked the AI narrative into overdrive, it was the launch of Andy Ayrey’s AI agent, Truth Terminal, back in October 2024.
What followed was an AI-related memecoin frenzy with thousands of coins and alleged AI agents being birthed. But the market quickly caught on that most of this was pure grift, and for a good couple of weeks, everyone thought this was just another short-term bubble that had popped.
While it's hard for the average degen to discern illusion from reality, once the initial wave of speculation settled, it became easier to identify projects pushing the boundaries of what can be built at the intersection of crypto and AI.
One such project is ai16z and its underlying framework, Eliza.
What is an AI agent?
It's essential to define what an AI agent is before delving into Eliza and other AI agent infrastructure plays.
A quick search on perplexity.ai spits out the following answer:
AI agents are sophisticated autonomous systems designed to perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve specific goals. They represent a significant evolution in artificial intelligence, moving from simple rule-based programs to advanced systems capable of complex decision-making and task execution.
In simpler terms, compared to regular bots and scripts which can only perform predefined tasks based on specific triggers, AI agents operate semi-autonomously. This means they can make decisions and take actions with minimal human intervention.
With that out of the way, let’s examine ai16z, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) leading the AI x crypto movement.
What is ai16z?
Do not let the shiny T-shirt and cute eyes fool you. Ai16z operates as an AI-controlled trading fund on Solana.
It makes investment decisions using a virtual fund manager known as AI Marc, distinguishing itself from traditional crypto asset management firms that rely on human fund managers.
AI Marc is designed to replicate the investment strategies and decision-making processes of Marc Andreessen, the founder of one of the largest venture capital funds, a16z.
Of course, this agent also has a token associated with it. Since the launch of ai16z on October 25, 2024, the token has managed to breach the $2.5 billion valuation threshold.
Apart from the speculative value of this being the first AI-powered venture firm, the token holders can participate in the project's governance and influence trading decisions through interactions with the AI agent.
The weight of their influence is proportional to the number of ai16z tokens they hold. The minimum amount necessary to interact with the agent is a hundred ai16z tokens.
Now, let's move on to the technology that powers this agent.
What is ElizaOS?
Eliza serves as the foundational framework for ai16z's operations. It powers the AI agents, like AI Marc or DegenAI, enabling them to interact with platforms like Twitter, Discord, and the blockchain.
These agents can autonomously execute tasks, make decisions, and manage operations like DAO governance, trading, and community coordination.
Eliza's flexibility and extensibility make it integral to ai16z's ability to function as an AI-driven venture capital fund.
Beyond ai16z, its primary purpose is to facilitate the development, deployment, and management of autonomous AI agents, particularly within the context of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the broader crypto ecosystem.
The framework facilitates simple interactions through APIs, allowing developers to integrate AI agents seamlessly into existing applications.
The agents created with ElizaOS can be applied in diverse scenarios beyond crypto trading, including managing everyday tasks like scheduling meetings and handling social media interactions.
The framework was created by Shaw, who has a background in AI and open-source development and has worked on various projects involving AI agents and technologies.
Eliza is recognized as the fastest-growing open-source library, with more than 170 contributors.
The project's recent partnership with Stanford Labs has established it as a frontrunner at the intersection of AI and crypto.
This initiative aims to create open-source frameworks, simulation platforms, and real-world applications for automated market-making systems and decentralized financial services.
But the competition is heating up.
Other developments
Although Eliza undoubtedly leads the way in AI agent infrastructure, some impressive competitors are in the mix.
Two notable projects, Arc and ZerePy, are developing similar agent tooling, but they use different programming languages.
Like blockchains, AI agents operate within their own framework. To connect with other agents, they need a way to communicate or "bridge."
The FXN protocol provides the foundation for this interconnected future with the help of Superswarm. Through its decentralized architecture, agents can discover each other, share resources securely, and coordinate complex actions while maintaining full control of their capabilities.
But agents or swarms of them are useless if they can’t interact with the real world. Enter Agent Tank and the open-source framework Tankwork, which enables any agent to unlock full computer use.
This allows AI agents from Eliza, Virtuals, or any other agent framework to interact with a desktop environment and perform any task an actual human can perform. It's wild stuff.
Conclusion
Beyond the veil of speculation, it’s apparent that genuine open-source development is rapidly picking up pace on crypto rails. Fast and cost-effective blockchains like Solana are paving the way for AI developers to utilize crypto to raise capital and collaborate.
Like SWIFT, Visa, and Mastercard are the backbone of a global and interconnected financial system for humans, blockchains are digitally native financial rails for AI agents.
We are rapidly approaching a future where agents begin to infiltrate our social and financial fabric.
It’s not unrealistic to say that in the next 5-10 years, every human will have their own agent performing actions on their behalf, like buying groceries, ordering Christmas presents, shitposting on X, or even investing.
