AI Agents: The New Supercycle Narrative?

Artificial intelligence and blockchain have circled each other for years, whether with decentralized AI solutions or AI-driven DeFi protocols. And yet, something different has taken the spotlight in recent months: AI agents.

Artificial intelligence and blockchain have circled each other for years, whether with decentralized AI solutions or AI-driven DeFi protocols. But something different has taken the spotlight in recent months: AI agents. With AI memecoins being called a new supercycle narrative and AI agents captivating the crypto community, it's necessary to ask what the hype is about.

There is a lot of confusion around the difference between AI agents and bots, so let's start from the beginning. Unlike chatbots or virtual assistants such as Alexa, AI agents don't just follow predefined rules. Instead, these agents are programs capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of their users. They're designed to analyze their environment and make decisions, all while acting independently to achieve set goals; AI agents have seen a particular interest coming from the trading sector precisely because of their nature. One can think of them as digital twins that determine the best way to get things done based on what you train them to do for you. The level of autonomy where you don’t have to lift a finger is why AI agents differ from traditional bots. However, not all agents that we encounter right now are fully autonomous, with the example of a semi-autonomous AI agent called Terminal of Truths, which is precisely where the AI memecoin frenzy began.

AI Agents For Memecoins

Surprisingly, the current buzz around AI agents across the crypto community owes a lot to AI memecoins — meme-related tokens that integrate AI, whether by deploying AI agents or adopting AI-driven utilities, dominated the memecoin mindshare, as posted by an analytics platform, Kaiko.

To quickly recap the story of the first AI memecoin: In a surprising turn of events, an AI agent known as Terminal of Truths was the reason for a meme coin Goatseus Maximus, with the ticker GOAT, to skyrocket to a peak valuation of $937 million after endorsement from the agent.

What’s important to note is that the Terminal of Truths operates semi-autonomously, with its creator, Andy Ayrey, overseeing its activity by filtering posts on X. Interestingly enough, neither the AI agent nor Ayrey was involved in launching GOAT, even though Ayrey did create a crypto wallet for its agents with people swarming to airdrop meme coins onto its address.

Yatharth Jain, the co-founder of Cluster Protocol, a company building a coordination layer for AI agents, shares: “I do like the concept of these agents, but we need to think one step further there because, as of now, people are just using wrappers of OpenAI and then integrating it over X's API" referring to how newly launched AI agents used for memecoins are now mostly focused on shilling tokens on X. But it doesn’t mean it’s the current status quo of AI agents and that they indeed lack autonomy. Quite the opposite. Projects like Spectral are introducing concepts like sentient memes to create an AI agent economy that is community-governed with truly autonomous trading.

From Web3 to the Agentic Web

Digressions around AI agents bring us to the bigger picture: the Post Web. This concept has been explored by Outlier Venture in their thesis, The Post Web, which investigates the convergence of AI with distributed ledger technology. According to their thesis, "Web3 is, and always has been, a back-end revolution that was never truly intended for direct human interaction. Web3 is a sleeping giant of functionality, tested by humans, waiting to be unlocked by machines," which strongly refers to a future where most online (and onchain) interactions will be AI to AI.

Jamie Burke, the CEO of Outlier Ventures, co-authored The Post Web

Web3 has long promised a more decentralized, user-owned internet, often called the "Read, Write, Own" era. But it’s high time to face it — using these tools can keep you awake at night with the complexity. Managing your self-custodial wallet or navigating the trenches of decentralized apps may be intimidating for many people, especially lay people. This is where the AI agents and the Agentic Web comes in. It builds on Web3's foundation but adds the fourth layer: delegation, shifting to "Read, Write, Own, Delegate.” In this scenario, AI memecoins, albeit thriving, are just one of many steps toward an agentic future.