A Review of the Five Waves of Web3 AI Projects

Since the intersection of blockchain and AI, the cryptocurrency field has experienced five major waves of AI concept trends. Each wave has been led by representative projects or events, demonstrating an evolution from pure conceptual speculation to gradual technological exploration.

Phase One (Early Exploration Period) - The Rise of AI Concept Coins: New Wine in Old Bottles

As early as 2018-2019, some projects attempted to combine blockchain and AI concepts, but the impact was very limited. The first wave of excitement was truly ignited by the market reaction following the release of ChatGPT in early 2023. OpenAI's ChatGPT became popular at the end of 2022, allowing the public to witness the power of AI entering the common civilian field, reminiscent of the explosion of the internet after personal computers began to proliferate over 20 years ago, and the frenzy of mobile internet products caused by the hot sales of smartphones a decade ago. The emergence of ChatGPT made ordinary users genuinely feel that it could enhance their work efficiency.

Since January 2023, a batch of early AI concept tokens has seen a price surge, marking the first wave of market activity. A typical representative is Fetch.ai (FET): as an early project on a certain trading platform, it claims to build a decentralized AI agent network. The price of FET tokens skyrocketed in January 2023 (increasing several times within a month), with its market capitalization once exceeding 200 million USD. During the same period, AI-related cryptocurrencies like SingularityNET (AGIX) and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) also led the market.

The characteristics of this stage are: old projects telling new stories - many AI concept coins issued between 2017 and 2019 have been revived by the tailwind of ChatGPT, becoming the focus of capital pursuit. However, at that time, the products of these projects were mostly in the early stages, with few practical applications, and the price increases mainly came from market sentiment and the anticipation of the AI trend.

Second Wave - This Round of "Crypto Bull Market" Gives Rise to AI Meme Coins

If the continuous strengthening of BTC starting from the end of 2023 is defined as the core theme of this round of "crypto bull market," then there have been only two tracks that stirred up waves during this period: one is the inscriptions and runes classified under the BTC ecosystem, which brought a surge of heat through innovative asset issuance; the other is the Meme track.

Some meme projects have started to incorporate AI concepts, and with the continuous rise of generative AI, the crypto community is beginning to see a surge in AI meme coins. A typical example is $TURBO—reportedly the world's first meme token created by AI. Digital artists used ChatGPT to help design and launch the TURBO token, with an initial funding of only $69. Surprisingly, this frog-themed meme coin, "orchestrated" by artificial intelligence, skyrocketed shortly after its launch, attracting a large number of retail investors. TURBO gained popularity with its unique story of "AI creating the next great meme coin," and after listing on multiple exchanges, its price soared hundreds of times within a few weeks, briefly placing its market cap among the popular meme coins.

The core feature of this wave is that AI has become a gimmick integrated into the crypto subculture. A large number of new projects claim to combine AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate coin names, images, or storylines, launching various meme tokens with AI elements. Investors are inspired by the AI wave on one hand, and on the other hand, they enter these high-risk tokens with a gambling mentality. However, in essence, these meme coins lack any AI technological content; they are merely community games that hype the AI concept. For instance, TURBO itself does not have any application functionality, and "AI-driven" is just a gimmick for issuance, with its value mainly supported by community consensus and a foolish mentality. The second wave of enthusiasm will gradually fade in the second half of 2024, with many AI meme coins quickly going to zero, and the market will start to cool down.

Wave Three - AI Agent Meme and GOAT Myth

From the second half of 2024 to early 2025, the cryptocurrency industry began to witness a new height in the fusion of AI and blockchain narratives: the rise of AI Agents, which shifted the hype from simple memes to narrative-driven automated agents. The iconic event driving this wave of enthusiasm was the viral success of Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT).

$GOAT was initially issued as a meme coin on the Solana blockchain, but unlike before, it is wrapped in a story of "AI Intelligent Entity Genesis": An AI agent named "Truth GPT" (created by developer Andy Ayrey) allegedly aims to create a blockbuster meme coin and even caught the attention and sponsorship of well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (who personally provided $50,000 in startup funds to the AI). With such a storyline, GOAT ignited market sentiment immediately after its launch—its price soared over 120 times on the first day (with a 24-hour increase of 12,000%), reaching a high of about $0.4664 within weeks! This myth of sudden wealth made GOAT a hot topic in the crypto community at the time, being hailed as the "AI-powered Super Meme Coin."

The GOAT craze reveals the power of AI Agent Narrative in the crypto space: teams or communities conceive a story of a "self-sufficient AI" leading a project, giving the token a sci-fi-like gimmick. For example, claiming that the AI agent manages funds and executes tasks independently, without human intervention, thereby endowing the token with a sense of mystery and futurism. During this period, in addition to GOAT, other concepts related to AI agents have also emerged, such as TruthGPT and various AI trading Agent DAOs that claim to trade coins automatically, many of which have seen short-term price surges.

However, most projects remain in the narrative stage, still only able to tell stories. The so-called AI agents are often just scripts with preset logic, far from true autonomous intelligent applications, let alone discussing whether the effectiveness of the applications is good or bad. This wave of enthusiasm peaked around January 2025 and then collapsed—external events (such as Trump announcing the issuance of his personal meme coin $TRUMP in January 2025, which drained market funds) caused speculative hot money to withdraw, and the prices of coins like GOAT quickly fell. The entire AI Agent sector has dropped from being highly sought after a few months ago to a low point.

The Fourth Wave - The Rise of a16z's AI Ecosystem + AI Agent Basic Concepts

After the recent waves of hype subsided, a group of AI projects that focus more on technology and ecological construction emerged at the end of 2024. Unlike the previous phase mainly driven by community speculation, this stage saw the rise of AI platform projects with notable backgrounds or serious visions. Typical examples include: ai16z and Virtuals, which are seen as representatives of the "a16z AI ecosystem" (the names dramatically mimic the well-known venture capital firm a16z). The common feature of these projects is: to build AI Agent infrastructure, attempting to become the "app store" for AI intelligences in the Web3 domain.

$AI16z is a phenomenal AI Meme coin that emerged in November 2024, with a name that alludes to the well-known venture capital firm a16z. The project is essentially positioned as a decentralized AI smart trading fund based on Solana, known as "AI Investment DAO," which primarily uses AI agents to gather on-chain and off-chain market information, analyze community sentiment, and execute trades automatically. This novel concept instantly ignited market attention after its launch: within just one day of going live at the end of October 2024, its market value skyrocketed from zero to approximately $80 million, fueling the enthusiasm of speculators. Surprisingly, a16z founder Marc Andreessen also publicly endorsed it on social media, personally sharing the concept introduction and link for AI16z. With the backing of notable figures and the "AI Investment + Meme" narrative, AI16z became the hottest crypto topic of the month.

There are many doubts in the industry about its speculative nature being higher than its actual implementation, but it is undeniable that it has opened up people's imagination for the "AI + DAO autonomous investment" model. To further enhance the value of the token, the ai16z team proposed an economic plan to evolve the project into "AI Layer1" in December 2024: that is, to launch a Launchpad specifically serving AI agents, making the ai16z token the base currency for agent transactions and a medium for transaction fees, as well as designing node incentives and value buyback mechanisms, among others. At this stage, we can see the project team attempting to shift from speculation to building a sustainable ecosystem, supporting token value through technical strength and economic models rather than just telling stories.

During the same period, the Virtuals protocol was very successful in ecological promotion as another representative project. Its team built an engaging narrative that attracted many developers to create AI agent projects on its platform, and it also drew a large number of retail investors. At its peak, the Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of leading projects within the Virtuals ecosystem once surpassed $5 billion, with the FDV of the Eliza framework’s corresponding token reaching about half of that, which is in the tens of billions of dollars range. Other notable projects, such as AIXBT, had peak market values reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. During this time, capital gave extremely high valuations to "AI agent platform/framework" type projects. However, the user scale and actual revenue at that time lagged far behind the valuations— for example, despite claiming a prosperous ecosystem, Virtuals' actual daily income was once less than $500 after its launch, creating a stark contrast with its high valuation. As the overall market cooled in early 2025, the token values of these projects generally halved or even collapsed, indicating that having only grand visions and narratives cannot support prices.

Therefore, the representatives of the fourth wave have not yet truly become the "app store" for AI Agents, but rather a platform that concentrates on AI Agent Memes. While everyone is waiting to see if it can break free and be reborn, the fifth wave is surging in.

Fifth Wave - "Hundred Flowers Awaiting Bloom" Closer to Practical Applications

After a brief downturn, the WEB3 AI sector began to regain momentum in early Q2 of 2025. The current hotspots have become quite apparent with a clear "return to reality": there are focuses on new generation AI agent real platforms and tools; new AI ecosystems specifically designed for the operation of AI projects; decentralized characteristics utilizing user data for value storage; and even integrations of WEB3 AI with other high-tech domains such as robotics. These developments present a "blooming variety" of forms, and we look forward to the day when these practical projects can truly achieve a "hundred flowers blooming". Below we list some examples from the fifth wave for everyone’s reference:

Zerebro

As an AI intelligent project in the Solana ecosystem, Zerebro focuses on providing a decentralized content generation and agent deployment platform, attempting to build a "Consumer-Grade AI Agent Launchpad". Its team announced the development of an agent issuance platform named "Zentients" by the end of 2024, envisioning the use of the ZEREBRO token as a medium for creating AI Agents' fees and value rewards. The scenario depicted by Zerebro is that anyone can generate their own AI agent (such as an email assistant, programming assistant, trading bot, etc.) with one click on the platform, and issue corresponding sub-tokens for the agents; the ZEREBRO token serves as a universal payment and governance tool for all agent services, facilitating value accumulation. This model is seen as a real application store for AI Agents, with promising prospects.

Stimulated by this, the price of ZEREBRO tokens continued to rise at the beginning of 2025. Especially after undergoing earlier adjustments, ZEREBRO surged 400% in just two days in April 2025, attracting significant market attention. During the same period, other related projects also experienced explosive growth: for example, the one claiming ".