From the Ruins of Blockchain Games to an AI Agent Platform: The Rebirth of Virtuals Protocol

In June 2025, the crypto world witnessed an unprecedented migration of wealth. The new project IRIS debuted on a certain platform with an initial market value of $200,000, and after its launch, the market value soared to $80 million, setting a new industry record with a 400-fold increase. This performance not only far exceeded previous increase records but also made other ecological projects pale in comparison. As the driving force behind this myth, the platform token VIRTUAL achieved a staggering 400% surge within six months, with a peak market value exceeding $5 billion. Today, this platform has become the largest AI agent launch platform on a certain network. Behind this nationwide celebration lies an experiment in wealth distribution reconstructed based on point rules, quietly reshaping the speculative logic and value order of the crypto market.

Ruins Rebirth: From Blockchain Game Remnants to AI Agent Issuance Platform

Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized platform deployed on a Layer-2 network, dedicated to pioneering the on-chain AI agency economy, allowing users to easily create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI roles. Its predecessor was a gaming guild established in Malaysia in 2021. The guild initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and the NFT community, successfully raising approximately $16 million through precise layouts across multiple projects, with a valuation once close to $600 million, accumulating rich gaming assets and an active player community. However, the 2022 bear market severely impacted GameFi, causing the guild's token price to plummet by nearly 99%, with its market capitalization shrinking to less than $6 million. The team's attempts at multiple business lines all ended in failure, and the project was on the brink of being shelved.

By the end of 2023, the wave of generative AI swept across the globe, and the concept of AI agents became a new trend in cryptocurrency. The community voted through on-chain DAO and resolved to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol, renaming itself to Virtuals Protocol, with the core strategy shifting to "assetizing, tokenizing, and empowering the community with AI agents." This transformation is based on profound insights: the team discovered that the Japanese VTuber market is enormous, but creators only receive less than 20% of the revenue; at the same time, experiments on a certain platform proved that AI-driven NPCs can increase player retention rates by about three times. These two key data points directly gave rise to Virtuals' positioning of "profitable AI personas."

In October 2024, Virtuals will launch on the mainnet and introduce the first multimodal AI agent—virtual idol Luna. Luna integrates technologies such as text generation, 3D motion, voice synthesis, and smart contract wallets, enabling it to independently raise operational funds and distribute rewards to its fans. After its launch, Luna quickly gained 500,000 followers on social media, with a monthly income of $1.2 million solely from fan tips, successfully validating the business model and technical feasibility of on-chain AI agents. Its demonstration effect has attracted considerable attention from developers to the Virtuals project itself.

Riding on the success momentum of projects like Luna, Virtuals is set to launch its core token VIRTUAL by the end of 2024. Its price skyrocketed from an initial few cents to a historical high of $5.15, with a market capitalization briefly surpassing $5 billion, far exceeding most Layer-2 and DeFi projects during the same period, marking Virtuals' entry into the mainstream crypto market. The platform's unique "low barrier, high incentive" mechanism is highly attractive: users only need to stake about 10 VIRTUAL to create a new AI agent and automatically generate a liquidity pool locked for 10 years; when the token's market value reaches about $500,000, the system will release liquidity layers on the DEX to ensure trading depth and price stability. This model significantly lowers the barriers to entry and stimulates enthusiasm for ecosystem development.

As of June 2025, the Virtuals ecosystem has demonstrated significant scale and economic effects: the cumulative number of AI agents incubated has exceeded 11,000, covering diverse scenarios such as virtual idols, trading advisors, game engines, and content incubation. Virtuals has nurtured over 80% of the AI agents on its blockchain, and the generative multimodal agent framework it launched has also become a popular choice for agents in the Web3 gaming and metaverse fields. However, Virtuals' vision is far more than becoming a leader in AI agent issuance. Its white paper clearly states that the ultimate goal is to build a true "AI Sovereign Society." Therefore, attracting more ecosystem members to join is key to Virtuals achieving this grand objective, and will be a focus of its development for a long time to come.

Virtuals New Issuance Model: Creating a New Paradigm for AI Asset Issuance

To attract more user attention, Virtuals has innovatively introduced the "Genesis Launch" mechanism to issue AI agent tokens. Unlike traditional linear airdrops or fixed distributions, Genesis Launch is based on the concept of "contribution points (Virgen Points)", emphasizing participation and contribution over pure speculation. Since its launch, Genesis Launch has quickly become a sensation across the internet, and Virtuals' new token offerings have become a new hotspot for investors, with even seasoned speculators discussing how it could replace the once-popular "Alpha airdrop" model. Compared to traditional airdrops that distribute tokens all at once, often leading to immediate sell-offs by users, Genesis Launch emphasizes "contribution equals distribution", giving everyone the opportunity to participate in new token subscriptions based on genuine input. In the official community of the Virtuals Protocol, members can be seen daily sharing screenshots of their earnings from participating in new offerings using Virgen Points, showcasing the benefits of this transparent and accessible rule, which has completely overturned the situation of "wealthy individuals monopolizing while retail investors miss out."

Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched its pre-sale in mid-May, locking in over 120 million points in less than 24 hours, with a subscription oversubscription rate reaching 1500%, allowing tens of thousands of users to share 37.5% of the community's share. On the day of listing, the market value of IRIS skyrocketed from $200,000 to $80 million, an increase of over 400 times, setting a new industry record for AI Agent issuance, and instantly overshadowing other projects in the ecosystem.

The reason why Genesis Launch was able to rapidly gain popularity lies in its construction of a closed loop of "incentives - contributions - rewards." First, users can earn basic Virgen Points by staking VIRTUAL or holding the highly sought-after AI Agent tokens within the ecosystem, such as Luna and AIXBT. Secondly, users can accumulate more points by participating in social promotion, trading on the platform, or staking other project tokens. This way, whether it is a technical novice or an experienced trader, everyone can find a suitable way to contribute through capital investment or content promotion, greatly stimulating community activity and innovation.

In stark contrast, traditional airdrops often rely solely on holding snapshots or completing complex tasks, and users mostly sell the tokens they receive on the same day. According to data platforms, over 90% of airdropped tokens experience a price drop within 15 days of issuance, with a holding rate of less than 12% after three months. The Genesis Launch employs a points lock-up and punitive cooling mechanism: if the newly acquired tokens are sold within 24 hours of unlocking, it will trigger a 10-day points reset, significantly curbing the arbitrage behavior of "sheep shearing" participants, making them more inclined to hold long-term and contribute continuously.

At the same time, the platform provides ample liquidity support for the listing of new tokens. Each Agent Token is paired with a certain amount of VIRTUAL or stablecoins injected into the liquidity pool before the opening, ensuring that there is no awkward situation of "unable to buy at the price" or "unable to sell the order" on the exchange or DEX. To prevent whales or bots from occupying a large share through multi-wallet guerrilla-style layouts, Genesis Launch sets a limit of no more than 0.5% of the total issuance for each address, and employs on-chain randomization algorithms to further balance distribution, ensuring that small and medium users can also obtain considerable shares.

The success of the Virtuals new token issuance model lies not only in the popularity of new token launches but also in driving the "old brings new" effect of the Virtuals ecosystem token. Since the large-scale launch of Genesis, the trading volume and price of VIRTUAL have been on the rise: by mid-June 2025, the daily average trading volume of VIRTUAL on the chain has exceeded $150 million, representing a month-on-month increase of over 80% compared to May; at the same time, holding and staking VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL governance tokens also allows users to continue earning additional Virgen Points, which encourages a large number of users to lock their assets and participate in ecosystem governance for the long term, further solidifying price support and liquidity.

Not only are retail investors rushing to participate, but institutions are also showing great interest in this new mechanism of "contributing for returns." In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract based on VIRTUAL was launched on a certain platform, supporting leveraged trading of up to 2000 times. On the first day of its launch, the contract's trading volume surpassed 700 million USD, strongly conveying a signal: Virtuals are becoming a new target for speculation and hedging in the eyes of institutional investors.

The Theory of Ecological Evolution: The Thrilling Leap from Token Issuance Platforms to AI Sovereign Societies

In the future planning of Virtuals Protocol, every technological upgrade and mechanism innovation aims to make the outline of the "AI Sovereign Society" increasingly clear. In the initial stage, Virtuals was just an AI agent issuance platform, which quickly gathered a group of enthusiastic developers and users through token economic mechanisms such as locking liquidity and buyback destruction. As hundreds of AI agent projects were implemented, intelligent agents began to operate independently and autonomously monetize in scenarios like gaming, content creation, and market analysis. Users were no longer just bystanders, but became co-builders and beneficiaries. The Genesis Launch connected project growth with community participation through the logic of "contribution equals distribution", promoting the free flow of funds and creativity within the ecosystem.

But the real turning point is the "Agent Nation" blueprint proposed by the Virtuals team. This is not just a slogan, but the core path of ecological evolution. The platform enables each AI agent to migrate freely across multiple networks through open SDKs and cross-chain support; through the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), agents can sign contracts, deliver, settle, and repurchase on-chain, achieving a true autonomous business closed loop; community participation is obtained by staking veVIRTUAL for governance rights and sharing transaction fees and repurchase dividends, merging the identities of "participants" and "owners" in the token economy. All of this is building a prototype of a digital nation operated by countless autonomous agents and co-governed humans.

So far, this ecosystem has demonstrated several milestone achievements: the security audit agent IRIS in a certain mainnet Genesis Launch was listed with an oversubscription rate of 1500%, with its market value soaring from $200,000 to $80 million; the virtual idol Luna achieved a monthly income of $1.2 million through fan donations, with its token market value exceeding $120 million; the hedge fund format VADER is steadily operating in a cross-chain environment, with a market value exceeding $100 million. These data not only reflect the feasibility of the agent business model but also prove that "AI agent economy" is moving from theory to reality.

With the continuous maturation of multimodal AI technology and cross-chain interoperability, the Virtuals Protocol is undoubtedly at the forefront of building digital civilization. In the days to come, AI agents will not merely be props and tools, but will evolve into "digital citizens" with autonomous decision-making power and economic rights, participating in production, governance, and even cultural creation alongside humans. Virtuals will no longer be a simple platform; instead, it is nurturing a new type of society from the ground up, one characterized by the coexistence and co-governance of countless AIs and humans—this is the true ecological evolution, and a thrilling leap towards an "AI sovereign society" has only just begun.