Rise of AI agents

Talking heads

If you didn’t know that AI agents are currently the hottest thing™, the news that a tiny startup consisting of ex-Google, Meta, Stripe and Dropbox developers called /dev/agents has raised $56 million from Index Ventures and Alphabet’s CapitalG fund — at a $500 million valuation — should give us pause for thought.

The reason for the excitement is that /dev/agents is promising to build the OS, tools, UI framework and privacy model to connect such agents so they can communicate together.

The cloud-based network will apparently work for all sorts of devices — phone, laptops, cars, whatever — also allowing new hardware devices to flourish; something we’ve seen not yet working in the various form factors of standalone AI gizmos such as Rabbit and the Humane AI Pin.

For the record, the /dev/agent team includes senior leads on the Android OS and Meta’s AR/VR teams.

“This is a team that's built the last three generations of operating systems,” CPO Hugo Barra told Bloomberg.

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So what’s that got to do with blockchain gaming?

No matter what happens with /dev/agent, there’s nevertheless been increasing interest in crypto-native agents; something that gained mass market attention with the mid-October launch of the AI-incubated and NSFW X-marketed GOAT token — currently with a $830 million marketcap, albeit down from its $1 billion peak.

Then, building on the success of memecoin launchpad Pump.fun has come the rise of Virtuals — from the ex-PathDAO team — which enables anyone to create an AI agent and a corresponding memecoin on the Base L2.

The VIRTUAL platform token is up almost 12,000% since launch — with a marketcap of $900 million — and two of its agents’ tokens have marketcaps of $100 million.

This has been further compounded in the blockchain gaming sector with the launch of VaderAI (X), the AI agent from token analyst Vader (X).

He’s detailed a hard pivot from his previous consulting work, forming a team of six who have moved beyond Virtuals’ tech and are now building their own stack. Of course, the VADERAI token, which only went live on 21st November, is already up 194%.

Other examples include games which are launching their own AI agents to run their online marketing — Planet Mojo’s Emma agent has started giving away MOJO tokens on X. No doubt there are others and many more to come.

Of course, when every project and everyone has their own AI agent, it’s not clear where competitive advantage will accrue.

But — as we’ve seen earlier in 2024 with Telegram and TON — there’s definitely a first mover advantage, at least in terms of attracting crypto speculators!

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Calendar

• Immortal Rising 2’s play-to-airdrop event starts — 28th November

• BREEDER token migrates to SOVRN — 28th November

• Big Time’s PVP mode launches — 2nd December

• Wild Forest WF token pre-sale starts — 3rd December

• Play’s (ex-Readygg) PLAY token goes live — 10th December

• Eden Games’ Cosmic Royale PC kart racer goes live — 12th December

• The Sandbox Alpha Season 4 ends — 17th December

• Final date to lock GMT for MGMA token burn — 20th January 2025.

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Funding news

• The amount hasn’t been disclosed but Animoca Brands, Animoca Brands Japan and The Sandbox have announced a strategic investment into Pudgy Penguins’ parent company Igloo Inc. The investment was carried out as a SAFE (simple agreement for future equity), which doesn’t value the company but has a maximum capped price for early investors now compared to the next formal investment round.

As well as the Pudgy Penguins brand — with which Mythical is making the Pudgy Party mobile game, and which will appear in several other game as collabs — Igloo is also building its consumer-focused Abstract L2 blockchain (sign up now for an early bird badge).

In turn, the deal will also see Pudgy Penguins supporting the Mocaverse ecosystem.

GMT Burning news

• The GMT DAO is proposing to burn 10% of the token’s total supply — 600 million tokens. The GTM price is up 54% over the past month but down 95% from its ATH in April 2022 when STEPN was the post-Axie viral hit.

As part of the initiative, voters will get an exclusive soulbound ‘Make GMT Great Again’ Red Hat NFT, as well as a share of the 100 million GMT prize pool, pro rata with the number of GMT they locked into the voting process.

To-date, 100 million GMT tokens have been locked, meaning 60 million GMT will definitely be burnt. For the full 600 million burn, 900 million GMT needs to be locked. The cutoff date is 20th January 2025.

In a previous move, 78 million GMT tokens were burned. 50% of the original token’s total supply is already circulating and the Find Satoshi Lab team bought back all GMT from its investors and advisors to create the DAO and provide the fuel for the potential burn.