Ailea Bulletin - State of the Market, Virtuals ACP, & More
Market Update, Virtuals Agent Commerce Protocol, & More
It’s looking like the crypto markets have found a bottom at the ~$3.6T range, as we’ve since rebounded from this support level as the week progressed. Memes have lost momentum in the fallout of $LIBRA, and AI agents saw a significant dip this past week. Today however, alts are seeing recoveries, with the agents sector up 10% in the past 24 hours.
AI is still the leading sector by mindshare currently, though its dominance remains low compared to early January. Most agents are down significantly in the past week, with $FAI and $ARC being the notable exceptions, with a new agent becoming a leader by marketcap; $KET. The winners of last week ($ARC, $AI16Z, $VVV) are in the red this week.
There was also a slew of high-profile chain launches and TGEs recently, taking some attention away from AI happenings. In this edition, we’ll discuss some recent developments in the agents space, including Virtuals Agent Commerce Protocol, and the emergence of agents on new chains…
Stay informed in the markets ⬇
Virtuals Agent Commerce Protocol
Virtuals released their Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) this past week. While this venture is in its early stages, the concept and implications are still significant and worth discussing. This new protocol defines a structure for inter-agent communication and transactions.
Within ACP, smart contracts can be leveraged to minimize hallucination as much as possible. Hallucinations are perhaps the main barrier preventing more widespread use of LLMs; one can only imagine the compounding of this issue if LLM-based agents began communicating on their own.
The ACP uses smart contracts to ensure accurate coordination between agents. This is critical for creating a system in which agents can act independently and money can exchange hands without human intermediaries. Right now, multiple agent providers and platforms allow agents to custody funds by hosting their own wallet. However the current phase of this rollout is rudimentary; many onchain possibilities that a human could engage in aren’t possible for agents, while basic tasks like simply sending and receiving transactions might be feasible.
The goal of ACP is to enable something similar to onchain businesses, run by agents. The largest AI companies, Google Gemini, OpenAI, xAI, and Perplexity, have their own deep research modes, able to draft lengthy reports on in-depth subjects autonomously. In a few short weeks, the ability to access deep reasoning ability via AI has increased exponentially. However, the ability for these tools to be monetized by AI agents remains unclear, and some guidelines may be needed to streamline this process. ACP can potentially act as the glue for coordinating the abilities of agents toward a common goal and balancing incentives without manual intervention.
ARC & AskJimmy Update
Last week, we discussed ARC’s new launchpad, arc_forge. After some initial platform issues, the launchpad is back online. This launch was rolled out with AskJimmy, an agentic platform building on ARC’s rig framework specializing in creating tools for trading. Users can develop agents for drawing insights around certain niche trading strategies, or automated vaults for liquidity.
In the past week, the AskJimmy team has been able to secure a partnership with Columbia University to obtain financial research papers and training data, as well as integrations with Drift protocol to provide automated trading tools for users. AskJimmy is an early example of ARC being able to develop its own distinct community of strong teams, which can strengthen the case for the rig framework being a key leader in the agents space.
BNB Chain Agents?
Last week we discussed how BNB Chain is showing some signs of heating up again. $BNB has outperformed almost all of the crypto market this past month, while the team and CZ himself have made some comments around chain upgrades and ecosystem development.
BNB Chain (BSC) remains one of the largest in crypto, with over $5.6B in TVL, the 4th most of all chains. When it comes to drumming up more activity, memecoins and AI agents were outlined as some key areas the team is looking to target.
Last week, CHEEMs entered the AI agents rankings despite not being covered very much, mostly relying on support from Binance and BNB Chain. It remains to be seen if a more organic AI agent ecosystem can develop on top of BNB Chain, and take advantage of the large amount of liquidity present.
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