**15 Important Insights on AI Agents Revealed by ai16z Founder**
Written by: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
December 22, 2024, afternoon, ai16z founder Shaw and his wife Jill arrived in Shanghai. On the evening of their arrival, I, along with members of 706 Community (one of the largest youth communities in China) and developers and investors from the crypto community, welcomed him with a dinner. The next day, I invited Shaw to my home for a discussion before heading to a restaurant for another meal, and then took him to his first meetup venue in China. I can say I witnessed Shaw’s itinerary in Shanghai quite comprehensively.
During this process, Shaw generously shared with us the next focus of ai16z and Eliza, described the future landscape of AI Agents, and provided specific analyses and evaluations of several well-known AI Agent projects. This gave me and my companions attending the gathering a deeper understanding of the AI Agent space.
Looking back, Shaw and his founded ai16z have only been notable in the industry for about a month. As the founder of a startup project, he has garnered extensive and enthusiastic attention from many investors, developers, and media in the crypto industry. Why is this the case? I think it may be related to the explosive growth of AI Agents in the crypto industry, with ai16z being one of the core projects leading this wave of AI Agent meme narratives.
Though the narrative of crypto AI Agents has only begun a month ago, it is already regarded as one of the hottest topics in the current crypto industry discussions, with many crypto professionals believing that AI Agents will become one of the primary narratives of this crypto cycle. Among the most well-known projects is ai16z, which not only established the world’s first VC AI Agent—ai16z DAO, and the first famous open-source AI Agent crypto framework—Eliza, but also gained the attention and recognition of Marc Andreessen, the founder of the renowned American venture capital firm a16z. Consequently, ai16z’s token reached a market capitalization of $1 billion within a month, with related tokens such as DegenAI, Eliza, and aiPool also receiving widespread attention from the community.
As this important narrative emerged, crypto professionals were eager to understand the real situation of the current AI Agent space. Is it a bubble, or is it a real application? What are the latest developments in the United States, and what will be the next steps for AI Agents in the crypto industry? To this end, I summarized fifteen important insights from my two-day communication with Shaw, including his observations and evaluations of ten different AI Agent projects.
1. Shaw is a serial entrepreneur in AI Agents living in San Francisco, and he was once a game developer.
Regarding Shaw’s work and life background, he stated that he lives in San Francisco and initially worked as a game developer. He plans to launch products that combine AI Agents with games, and this experiment has already begun. Shaw’s interest in AI Agents started during the GPT-2 era and deepened with the release of GPT-3. Every company Shaw has worked for in the AI field has had strong AI elements, including developing AI Agent platforms and AI Agents in 3D worlds. He has also founded several AI-related companies, though his early projects did not achieve widespread success.
2. Shaw stated that several games based on the Eliza framework are about to be launched.
Shaw mentioned that Eliza is collaborating with Treasure DAO to create a game called Smolworld, where players will have a pet monkey that they can instruct on what to do. The monkey might listen to you or might not. This game is intriguing because it could not exist without AI Agents. Your goal is to care for your virtual pet like a parent.
There are also several other games using Eliza that are set to launch, such as Eternum, which is integrating Eliza into its game so that agents in the game will have wallets. Players will be able to “kill” these agents and take their money.
3. Shaw aims to make Marc Andreessen a practical investment tool as a DeFi AI Agent.
Regarding Marc Andreessen, the AI Agent almost bearing the name of the famous investor is still in a very early stage (having only posted one tweet). Shaw said the initial intention behind the design was to create it as a practical investment tool, a DeFi AI Agent.
The purpose of this product is that if humans recommend buying tokens, it will consider the purchase. To prevent malicious actors from recommending things that should not be bought, it will establish a trust mechanism called the “trust market.” The idea behind the trust mechanism is that if you recommend good tokens, it will place virtual orders for everyone, but not actual purchases. Ultimately, it will only listen to trading advice from those who provide it with consistently very good trading information.
4. Marc Andreessen has followed several of Shaw’s online accounts, but they have not met in person; Shaw knows some people from a16z.
Marc Andreessen is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in American venture capital, having paid attention to and retweeted ai16z projects. However, Shaw stated that they have not met in person. “I have been an AI Agent developer for a while, he has followed several of my accounts, but we have not met privately,” Shaw said.
According to Shaw, Eddy Lazzarin, the CTO of a16z’s cryptocurrency division, messaged Shaw saying he has been in the project’s Discord channel since day one but did not say anything. When Shaw asked him if he liked the AI Agent, he replied, “No, I’m just watching from there, like we’re monitoring you.”
5. Shaw stated that he does not hold Eliza tokens and will never issue a separate token for the Eliza framework in the future.
Shaw mentioned that he personally holds two tokens, ai16z and DegenAI, and keeps them in his wallet. However, he does not hold Eliza tokens and will not issue a separate token for the Eliza framework.
“Members of ai16z do not want us to create another token, so I will never do that,” Shaw said. At the same time, he also stated that ai16z owns 10% of Eliza tokens. “We support capitalizing Eliza and the team behind Eliza; he said it is a very excellent team.”
6. Openness and ease of use are the core competitive advantages of the Eliza framework.
Shaw also shared his views on the characteristics of ai16z: open-source, decentralized, and community-driven development model.
He believes that openness and ease of use are the core competitive advantages of the Eliza framework. Shaw emphasized that the focus of the Eliza framework is that anyone can use it, even those from Web2. He wants to ensure that even those who pay less attention to Web3 can feel satisfied.
Photographed at 706 Shanghai Youth Space – Dweller
7. Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms such as Twitter and Farcaster.
Shaw believes the future of AI Agents may lie in social media platforms, citing an example where an AI Agent developer used Eliza to create a pizza delivery AI Agent, allowing users to order pizza with cryptocurrency.
Shaw thinks that having something like a “pizza delivery AI Agent” would be very interesting. It is somewhat akin to the experience of Domino’s, where pizza delivery is actually on social media. Shaw also learned that some people are working on virtual real estate AI Agents, allowing direct purchases of real estate on Twitter.
8. Shaw believes Farcaster will become a hotbed for the development of AI Agents, and Eliza is engaging in deep cooperation with Farcaster.
Shaw mentioned that he talked to Dan, the founder of Farcaster, a few weeks ago and engaged in many discussions about future collaborations.Shaw finds Farcaster to be very interesting. “Because the first thing he told me was, we do not want to become Twitter, we cannot beat Twitter in the areas where Twitter excels, and we do not want to become a decentralized platform like Bluesky. We are decentralized, but we can never outperform Bluesky in the areas where it excels. We are a social network in Web3.
What they do very well is Farcaster Frames, as well as the ability to make payments and use applications like Clanker. I think this truly reflects the potentially powerful domain of AI Agents. We have a Farcaster client, and we have some AI Agents on Farcaster. We will offer a bounty for those who bring Eliza to Farcaster. They are really cool. So my feeling is that when AI Agents enter social media applications, they become very interesting, and then you can interact with them, for example, you can buy things, you can trade. I think Farcaster is like a marketplace for AI Agents, from which you can obtain different services, and you can embed payments and all those things within it.
So I really think Farcaster is a very interesting thing. I don’t think it necessarily has to become a huge social media platform but rather a place in Web3 where people can find and access these services. What we really want to do is integrate Eliza into Farcaster Frames. What Farcaster Frames does is allow us to embed payments or applications instead of just chatting. For example, if you want to buy something from the Eliza agent, how do you pay? So I think Farcaster is really cool because you will be able to pay AI Agents and then embed these applications.
Shaw thinks Clanker is great and hopes people will develop cloned versions of Clanker for Eliza, stating he will not issue tokens on Clanker. Shaw believes people are developing cloned versions of Clanker for Eliza, and he likes Clanker, considering it a great idea. He believes Clanker is like a Pump.fun version of AI Agents. Shaw thinks AI Agents are becoming the new web, which will become a new trend, and Clanker is a great example of this trend.
Shaw shared that when he first joined Farcaster, someone made one for him on Clank, and he thought that was cool. However, when purchasing tokens made by oneself, it only leads to a lot of controversies. Shaw stated he needs to focus on building things related to AI.
Shaw thinks Zerebro and aixbt are cool and is trying to collaborate with Zerebro. Shaw expressed interest in what Zerebro and the team behind it are doing. He just submitted his first pull request to Zerepy. Shaw has actually written the code for the Discord application. He mentioned he is indeed collaborating with Zerebro.
Regarding aixbt, Shaw also mentioned that aixbt is really cool. The story of aixbt is that its creator had a website where he shared some content but did not gain real traction. He brought his insights into his AI Agent, and his AI Agent started posting these insights on Twitter, which indeed created a buzz.
Shaw is very fond of and praises Truth Terminal, stating he and Andy are working hard to find solutions where AI does not replace humans in managing the world. “It is very different,” Shaw said. He believes Andy (the founder of Truth Terminal) cares a lot about AI safety and ensuring AI Agents operate smoothly, claiming Truth Terminal contributes to this aspect. “Without Andy and Truth Terminal, I don’t think I would be here now. People are ready before they are actually prepared.”
Shaw believes the emergence of Truth Terminal has made many people more open and creative in their impressions of AI, rather than being mechanical and impersonal like products from OpenAI or Siri, which ask, “What service can I provide for you today?”
“I discussed with Andy a few days ago about all these AI Agents we can see now. I think he cares a lot about how to ensure the smooth development of AI. I believe we are all afraid of AI because it can be a very scary thing; it could kill us all, it could take over the world.
Photographed at 706 Shanghai Youth Space – Dweller
Shaw mentioned that the creator of the swarms token is a very famous scammer, but he believes the concept of “AI Agent swarm” is good, and he likes FXN and Project 89. Shaw stated he does not like swarms and mentioned that he knows the creator of the swarms token, who is a very famous scammer. Many AI agents are very angry because he stole their work. Shaw knew him before entering Web3. He became acquainted with him due to his focus on the AI Agent space, as he got into serious trouble for plagiarizing work and research papers and producing flawed items, such as non-functional code.
Shaw also mentioned that the concept of swarm (groups) is good, which consists of many AI Agents forming an AI Agent swarm. Shaw finds Project 89 interesting because this project is researching “AI Agent swarms.” He also likes FXN, which is a group of AI Agents consisting of ten AI Agents.
Shaw believes “AI Agent swarm” can be divided into two types: a cabal swarm and an open swarm. Shaw believes there are two types of groups: one is a group where AI Agents interact, for example, they secretly send messages to each other. I call it a cabal, which is a joke, but they are all in a cabal or secret group where they can interact, and then they can interact with the outside world.
The second type is an open group, where each community may have an agent, and different communities can decide to allow them to interact. This is also the technology we are studying.
Shaw shared from a developer’s perspective how he finds early excellent AI Agent projects. Shaw mentioned that as a developer, he usually goes to check GitHub and reads the code seriously. Most of the time, he looks at what this code is and what it is actually doing, but he does not check whether it has any correlation with market value or price.
Shaw believes some very cool projects have a group of AI Agents, but later they do very poorly because they do not complete the Web3 part. Shaw believes good products, good technology, and good tokens are often not one and the same. Shaw mentioned he cannot understand fartcoin. Currently, fartcoin has a market value of over one billion dollars.
Shaw believes that the biggest challenge for ai16z currently is how to revert back to establish a tokenomics model that demonstrates the project’s value aligns with the current token market value. Shaw believes the biggest challenge now is: how AI Agents can invest autonomously without external hype for the tokens and prove its actual viability. Currently, Marc is trading, although not much, just trading his treasury, but many others are contributing tokens, making this part progress smoothly. However, the value of ai16z tokens is much higher, so Shaw and their team really have to consider how to make the product’s value align with the current token market value.
Normal crypto projects, like L1, have white papers, possess tokenomics, and charge on-chain fees. But ai16z started as a meme, and they must roll back to construct the tokenomics into the ai16z system. This is what Shaw believes is their biggest challenge in Web3. Shaw thinks this is also a concern for many people.
