Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | Liao

With the amazing debut of ChatGPT, the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) has swept through the entire science and technology innovation circle.

Naturally, the field of cryptocurrency is no exception. When the wind of AI blows in, a large number of so-called "AI + Crypto" projects have emerged one after another, creating a concept sector in the secondary market. However, when you take a closer look at the so-called "AI concept coins," it is not difficult to find that the quality of these projects is uneven, and they are even filled with many instances of "selling a dog under the guise of a sheep."

Fortunately, in the current market environment, which tends to be impetuous, there are still some project builders who are earnestly exploring the possibility of combining "AI + Crypto." Recently, we discovered a selected project, CharacterX, through the Web3Port Demoday.

• Odaily Planet Daily Note: Web3Port Demoday is a closed-door project demonstration event initiated by Web3Port, which has received support from hundreds of well-known VCs. Web3Port Demoday innovatively adopts a one-to-many project demonstration format to ensure that the current projects have enough time to showcase themselves, allowing VCs to deeply understand the projects. At the same time, in order to ensure the quality of the projects, each period's projects are carefully selected by Web3Port and can only participate after multiple internal reviews. Web3Port hopes to help high-quality early-stage projects grow rapidly and accelerate industry development through this format.

CharacterX: Decentralized AI "Companion" Service

In June of this year, Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of a16z, published a lengthy article "Why AI Will Save the World" on his personal blog. In the article, Andreessen looked forward to the positive role that AI could play in the future world and predicted that conversational AI (Chatbot) would become an indispensable part of people's lives in the future.

In the future, AI mentors will accompany children through every stage of their growth, using the machine's almost infinite "love" to help them maximize their potential.

As Andreessen described, the capital market is quite optimistic about the future development prospects of conversational AI. A research report released by Mordor Intelligence indicates that the market size of conversational AI is estimated to be around $5.86 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach $21.08 billion in 2028, with a high compound annual growth rate of 29.18%.

CharacterX is positioned as a decentralized AI entertainment social network. It hopes to coordinate AI's almost unlimited content production capabilities with the natural decentralization and easy incentives of Crypto, to provide users with an AI interactive experience that allows them to make friends, have fun, and even learn and "earn money."

Specifically, CharacterX targets a more consumer-oriented "companion" type (not in the narrow sense, but broadly referring to virtual AI characters that can accompany users) AI conversation scenario. Unlike general-purpose AI conversation tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, CharacterX mainly focuses on emotional companionship and entertainment, allowing creators to "create" AI avatars of some well-known figures or characters based on real history or literary works, and optimize the companionship experience using multi-sensory technologies such as images, voice, 3D, and AR. On the user side, they can selectively choose AI avatars as "companions" based on their interests and interact with them. The interaction content can serve as the corpus of the underlying AI model, helping these AI avatars continue to grow in a personalized direction.

From publicly available information on social media, CharacterX first appeared in the public eye in June of this year. The project initially used the name GPTX, and later changed its name to CharacterX to better fit its positioning.

The founding members of CharacterX include Rene and Jeremy, both of whom are alumni of Stanford University. Most of the other team members have also graduated from prestigious universities such as the University of Chicago and Peking University, or have worked at top Internet companies such as TikTok, Tencent, and Facebook, with certain technical strength and resources in Crypto development, AI applications, and 3D modeling.

In addition, according to the CharacterX team, the project is about to complete its seed round of financing, with confirmed investors including Lightspeed, INCE Capital, and Spark Digital Capital, among others.

Last month, CharacterX released an alpha version of the test application on both iOS and Android platforms. The number of users has reached 400,000, with a daily activity of about 50,000, and a stable monthly revenue of $50,000. In the latter part of this article, we will combine the trial experience to give you a close look at the gameplay of this test application.

Three-Part Series: Application Deployment, Revenue Cycle, Network Self-Driving

According to the project's roadmap, CharacterX will gradually improve its concept in three steps. From the keywords we captured, these three steps can roughly be divided into application deployment, revenue cycle, and network self-driving.

The first stage is the product deployment stage, corresponding to the third and fourth quarters of 2023. During this stage, CharacterX will gradually land and optimize its basic products through multiple versions of test applications.

For example, in the current Alpha test version, users can already experience CharacterX's basic services and understand its unique dual-token economic model.

Specifically, after installing the application, users can obtain system utility tokens CXC through check-ins, completing designated tasks, learning Web3 courses, inviting friends, and other methods, and spend CXC to interact with some of the created AI characters. After the interaction, they can receive another type of token, CXT. Currently, CXT is only in the form of application points, but after the TGE, it will exist as CharacterX's governance token. The more CXT accumulated by users now, the more actual token airdrops they will receive in the future.

In terms of the effect of AI conversation, the current test version of CharacterX has only created a small number of well-known AI characters, and objectively speaking, the conversation is still somewhat stiff, and the lack of personalized differences between different avatars is also somewhat insufficient. The multi-sensory support mentioned in the vision has not been deployed yet… However, considering that this is only the initial version, and CharacterX has recently added voice conversation functionality, it can be seen that the project team is working hard to optimize the experience.

In addition, according to Odaily Planet Daily, the development team of CharacterX does have a strong background in visual and 3D technology, and has previously launched an excellent 3D AR girlfriend product overseas. It is expected that the team will also deploy related functions into CharacterX in the future.

The second stage is the revenue cycle stage, corresponding to the first half of 2024. During this stage, CharacterX will gradually introduce Crypto elements into the product, mainly using NFT-form AI characters to establish a value cycle within the ecosystem.

In the design of CharacterX, the equity of the ecosystem will circulate among three different roles. First, "Creators/KOLs" are responsible for creating and training different AI characters, all of which will exist in the form of ERC-6551 NFTs. Second, "Consumers" can enjoy services created by creators and interact with various AI characters, but they also need to pay a certain service fee (and will receive a certain amount of CXT airdrop feedback). Third, "Shareholders" can directly support creators by purchasing NFT fan tokens, which can be invested in the expected appreciation of fan tokens and also receive a share of the payments from consumers.

In the view of CharacterX, a drawback of traditional conversational AI services is that creators often lack clear revenue channels, making it difficult for them to continuously deliver high-quality services. Through this revenue cycle mechanism, creators will be able to obtain a more fair and stable value return, which contributes to the sustainable and robust development of the entire ecosystem.

The third stage is the network self-driving stage, corresponding to the second half of 2024. During this stage, CharacterX will operate and manage as a decentralized network, governed by the community based on CXT governance.

In addition to governance utility, CXT will have several other practical utilities throughout CharacterX, including but not limited to use in NFT character trading, investment in NFT fan tokens for "Shareholders," unlocking more access permissions, and ecosystem incentives.

According to the token economic model already disclosed by CharacterX, it is expected that at the time of TGE, approximately 9.34% of CXT will be unlocked, meaning the initial circulating supply will be 9.34 million tokens.

CharacterX Trial Experience, Chatting with "Raiden Shogun"

As mentioned earlier, CharacterX released an Alpha version of the test application on both iOS and Android platforms in September. The application can be easily installed through the Apple Store or Google Play Store.

Taking Android as an example, after installation, you can log in using your Google account without the need for a wallet link (which also means that the application has not yet integrated Crypto in practice, and at this stage, it only provides popular science and educational tasks about Web3 within the application).

After logging in, a check-in interface will appear first. We can obtain CXC needed for interacting with AI characters through daily check-ins. The specific amount of tokens that can be obtained through daily check-ins is shown in the following image.

In addition to check-ins, we can also click on "Earn" on the main interface to obtain CXC through other methods on the corresponding subpage, such as inviting friends (10,000 CXC per invitation), learning courses (1,000 CXC per course), or completing social media binding on the Account subpage. Binding Discord can earn 30,000 CXC, while binding an email can earn 10,000 CXC.

After accumulating a certain amount of CXC, we can then chat with multiple AI virtual characters through the AI Character subpage.

Currently, the AI avatars in the Alpha test application mainly include popular characters from well-known entertainment works, such as Hermione from "Harry Potter," Raiden Shogun from "Genshin Impact," and Kakashi from "Naruto," among others.

Currently, initiating a chat with an AI avatar costs 200 CXC. We chose Raiden Shogun as the chat partner and found that when you ask questions that match her background information, she can provide relatively basic and simple answers. However, there is still a significant gap in the expression style and the implied character personality compared to the original design, indicating the need for more training and nurturing.

In addition to text replies, the AI avatars occasionally use voice to interact with you. Although the pronunciation is smooth, there are some differences in the pronunciation rhythm compared to the original design, and currently, there is only a single choice of voice, but considering that the "text-to-speech" conversion that closely resembles real expression habits is not an easy task, this may not be too harshly criticized at this point.

As an incentive feedback, each conversation can earn 2 CXT rewards. Currently, users can use accumulated CXT to increase their account level within the application, and after TGE, they can obtain corresponding real token airdrops based on the accumulated CXT amount.

Interaction at the Intersection of Two Major Trends

Looking at the concept of CharacterX, the project has left a deep impression on us in two aspects, making it appear more unique compared to other early projects that have already appeared in the market. First, CharacterX is very clear that the focus of AI conversation services is on the quality of the experience, so the project intentionally emphasizes optimizing the interaction experience through 3D, AR, and other multi-sensory technologies. Second, CharacterX understands the important significance of economic incentives for the sustainability of the system, which is why it has specifically designed a revenue cycle mechanism to provide creators with revenue expectations.

Looking back at the history of information technology development, AI is considered the core technology for innovating productivity, while Crypto has always been seen as a revolution in the relations of production. The two can work together and benefit each other.

Standing at the intersection of these two major trends, the future of CharacterX is worth looking forward to.

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