AI Trends in the Trenches
What's running, what's fake, and where it's heading
It's been about 2.5 weeks from the AI agent market bottom (~$4B MC) and market is in full blown @virtuals_io bull run. Yep... only Virtuals. This run is akin to Oct - Nov last year when Virtuals started its agent tokenization platform, cementing itself as the pioneer and first legit player offering top distribution network for any AI-related projects (that are willing to launch a "fair launch" token).
What's different this time is the latest feature, "Genesis Launch" — a fairer way of launching & rewarding early supporters. This brings us to the first trend
1. Fair Launch / Gamified Launchpad
Genesis Launch drastically changed the state of the trenches, from degens aping into random / cabal shitters on pumpfun to degens getting almost guaranteed 5-10x on new launches.
This is achievable through the introduction of "points" which align the interest between different stakeholders, and the fixed MC, fixed supply launch format where every project launch at 112k $VIRTUAL (~$200k FDV). Each participant can get up to 0.5% of the supply based on the amount of points they contribute. Users earn points by holding / staking $VIRTUAL as well as top agent tokens (they have a list for this) or simply yapping about Virtuals.
The recent introduction of cooldown period to disincentivize selling behavior further improve the allure of Virtuals Genesis Launchpad since sellers would have to think twice on selling.
So far the Genesis Launchpad has proven to be very successful with @BasisOS being the most successful netting 200x for participants. Since then, Virtuals has been full of runners netting 5-40x ROI
Given the success of the Genesis Launches, capital & attention started consolidating on Virtuals ecosystem again, lifting the valuation floor of almost all agents on the platform
But despite the renewed hype, the lack of quality projects remain one of the biggest challenge within Virtuals ecosystem which brings us to the second trend