đź‘‘ Weekly AI Edge #18

AI Agents are having a "field" day. Everyone loves Andy.

Author

Teng Yan
October 25, 2024

GM !

It’s been a week, and everyone is still talking about AI agents—a good sign that this might not just be a passing trend but the start of something lasting.

Truth Terminal continues to dominate the conversation. Its creator, Andy Ayrey, has promised to release a full project history and technical breakdown from March to now. Keep an eye out for that—it’s bound to be fascinating.

Now you can even chat with the infinite backrooms model using the simulator Andy has set up.

The man of the moment: Andy Ayrey. (Source: Blocmates)

And let’s take a moment to appreciate Andy’s impeccable moustache and beard. Truly a man of culture. As he says:

“You don’t have your memes, your memes have you.”

In this edition of our weekly AI Edge, we cover:

  • Small-cap AI coins having a field day

  • Must-reads from Pantera, Coinbase and Delphi Digital

  • Theoriq’s testnet metrics

🦍 State of the Market..

The Crypto AI sector market cap dipped 1.8% this week, largely dragged down by the heavyweights. Bittensor (TAO), for example, fell 8.7% to $530.

However, it’s a completely different story for the low-cap tokens, many of which are having an absolute field day on the AI agents narrative.

VIRTUAL stole the show, surging 146% over the past seven days, fueled by its role as the pump.fun playground for AI influencers. We flagged VIRTUAL in last week’s newsletter—so congrats to those who hopped on board before the rally.

Meanwhile, GOAT continues to go viral. Even Brian Armstrong is on it, offering to help Truth Terminal create its own dedicated crypto wallet on Coinbase. If you haven’t checked it out yet, we published a deep dive on GOAT earlier this week—it’s worth a read.

SPEC and OLAS are also catching the AI agent buzz, climbing 28% and 21% respectively over the week.

Top 5 Losers (7D Change) in our Crypto AI token watchlist

SNS (-34%)

ENQAI (-31%)

COMAI (-20%)

PRIME (-18%)

NMT (-16%)

đź“Š  Chart of the Week — Theoriq’s Testnet

Source: Dune, @incyd_

Theoriq is building a modular, composable base layer for on-chain AI agents. It launched its testnet two weeks ago, and the early user metrics have been impressive.

Over the past week, 15,000–20,000 daily active users have been interacting with AI agents on the testnet. However, keep in mind that these numbers are incentivized—users earn points for taking actions.

There are 14 AI agents that you can interact with, including an investment planner (where you can ask it about specific tokens), an Eigenlayer agent and a crypto strategy game.

One that I found was pretty cool is the “Forecasting agent”. For example, it currently gives a “45% chance of Donald Trump winning the 2024 US presidential election.”, while outlining the key factors behind the forecast.

🏆 Caught Our Eyes..

Fundraising

  • Skyfire raises $9.5M to build a payment infrastructure for AI agents, led by Coinbase Ventures and a16z

Upcoming Launches

  • GRASS airdrop will happen on Oct 28 (Monday). It’s going to be a big week.

  • 0G Labs, a decentralised AI operating system, announces its upcoming AI alignment node sale on Nov 11 - 13. Node operators will earn 15% of the total 0G ecosystem tokens over 3 years. The mainnet expected to go live in Q1 2025.

  • Chasm network airdrop checker is live

Project Updates

  • The AiFi Alliance is established to unite builders at the intersection of DeFi and AI. The 11 founding members include Valory/Olas, Almanak, Mode, Inference labs and more

  • Wayfinder opens up the waitlist for its closed Alpha, which begins on Monday. Probably worth signing up.

  • Hyperbolic and Nous Research announce a revenue-sharing partnership for it’s Hermes-3 open-source model

  • Nous Research drops a must-watch 4-min video and article about the critical importance of open-source

  • Morpheus announces Homestead (Phase 3) will go live on 18 November, bringing rewards for compute providers.

  • Heurist releases its Whitepaper, aiming to redefine DePIN for AI

  • Phala Network’s Q3 report by Messari highlights 66M+ contract executions and 510 monthly active users in Q3 2024.

  • Atoma Network, a decentralised AI cloud, publishes a new research paper on “Privacy-preserving decentralised AI with confidential computing”

  • PIN AI, a personal AI platform on your phone, starts beta testing this week

  • Allora Network and Raiinmaker partner to improve AI accuracy through human-verified data validation

Bittensor

  • Big news: Bittensor allows users to deploy and interact with Ethereum smart contracts on its subtensor blockchain, enabling DeFi apps to exist.

  • Macrocosmos releases its Subnet Status Updates for October

  • Sturdy Finance (SN10) has allocated $60M in its AI-powered DeFi protocol

  • Taoshi (SN8) teases a major announcement on October 25

 đźŤŚ  Research Bonanza: Must-Reads

A wave of exciting research from VCs in the space has dropped this week, so I’ve compiled the best of it here for your easy reference

  1. Pantera wrote a letter highlighting crypto’s role in the AI revolution, framing it as a “picks and shovels” bet in the emerging space

  1. Coinbase Ventures shared its core thesis, arguing that crypto will enhance AI by bringing distribution, verifiability, censorship-resistance, and native payment rails—paving the way for what it calls the “agentic web.”

  1. Delphi Digital unlocked all four parts of its decentralized AI research series, spanning an impressive 36,500 words. The series covers the full stack: Overview → Infra → Middleware → Apps. I’m a big fan of Pondering Durian and love his unique perspective on the space.

🔥 On X..

AI people starting to take crypto seriously.

Marc Andreessen talks about GOAT and Crypto AI for 30 minutes

TAO’s virtuous cycle

Goody Alexander muses on AI Memecoins

The real supercycle is in AI

Knower compiles a list of great resources on AI alignment

Where does value accrue to in Crypto AI?

That’s it for this week! If you have specific feedback or anything interesting you’d like to share, please just reply to this email. We read everything.

Cheers,

Teng Yan

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This newsletter is intended solely for educational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. It is not an endorsement to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. Always conduct your own research and exercise caution when making invest

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