Introduction

We have found that every time we delve into research in the industry, the crypto market always experiences a significant surge. BTC has once again broken through 100,000 U, and ETH has surprisingly climbed above 2,500 U. Is it really true that hard work pays off? Just kidding, it's actually because the US and UK reached a trade agreement, and the initial talks between the US and China went quite well (after Trump tweeted about it, both countries confirmed it). This still indicates that the entire crypto industry remains a high-risk financial speculation market, following the trends of the broader economic environment, and has not yet formed an independent market like gold and oil. This reinforces our commitment to finding long-term development breakthroughs in the crypto space, and AI + WEB3 is currently the track we value the most.

In this article, we will continue the thought from the previous article and review the five waves of AI development in WEB3 over the past few years. Here, we will summarize with a table, of course, we will focus on the current fifth wave:

Review of the Five Waves of Web3 AI Projects

Since the intersection of blockchain and AI, the crypto space 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 hype to gradual technological exploration.

01 First Wave (Early Exploration Period) — The Rise of AI Concept Coins like Fetch.AI: Old Wine in New 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 hype was truly ignited by the market reaction following the launch of ChatGPT in early 2023. OpenAI's ChatGPT gained popularity at the end of 2022, showcasing the power of AI that could enter the general civilian domain, reminiscent of the internet explosion after home computers became popular over 20 years ago, and the frenzy of mobile internet products following the hot sales of smartphones a decade ago. The emergence of ChatGPT made ordinary users feel that it could genuinely enhance their work efficiency.

One major characteristic of the crypto circle is that "any hot topic can be speculated upon," so ChatGPT sparked endless imagination in the crypto market regarding the prospects of "AI + blockchain." Starting in January 2023, a batch of early AI concept tokens saw their prices soar, marking the beginning of the first wave of market activity. A typical representative is Fetch.ai (FET): as an early project on Binance Launchpad, it claims to build a decentralized AI agent network, and the price of FET tokens skyrocketed in January 2023 (increasing several times within a month), with its market cap briefly surpassing 200 million USD. During the same period, AI-related tokens like SingularityNET (AGIX) and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) also led the market.

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

02 Second Wave — The Current "Crypto Bull Market" Breeds AI Meme Coins

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

Some Meme projects began to incorporate AI concepts, and with the ongoing popularity of generative AI, the Crypto community started to see a surge in AI Meme coins. A typical case is $TURBO — reportedly the world's first meme token created by AI. A digital artist used ChatGPT to help design and issue the TURBO token, with initial funding of only $69. Unexpectedly, this AI "curated" frog-themed meme coin 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 being listed on several mainstream exchanges, its price surged hundreds of times within just a few weeks, briefly entering the ranks of popular meme coins.

The core feature of this wave is: AI became a gimmick integrated into crypto subculture. A large number of new projects claimed to combine AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate coin names, images, or plots, launching various meme tokens with AI elements. Investors, inspired by the AI wave, flocked to these high-risk tokens with a gambling mentality. However, in reality, these meme coins had no AI technological content and were merely community games speculating on the AI concept. For instance, TURBO itself had no application functionality; "AI-driven" was just a gimmick for issuance, and its value was mainly supported by community consensus and a speculative mindset. The second wave of hype gradually faded in the second half of 2024, with many AI meme coins rapidly going to zero as the market began to cool down.

Price Changes of $TURBO, Source: CoinMarketCap

03 Third Wave — AI Agent Meme and the GOAT Myth

From the second half of 2024 to early 2025, the crypto industry began to witness a new height of narrative fusion between AI and blockchain: the concept of AI Agents emerged, shifting speculation from simple memes to automated agents with storylines. A landmark event driving this wave of hype was the explosive popularity of Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT).

$GOAT was initially issued as a meme coin on the Solana chain, but unlike previous ones, it was packaged with a story of "the creation of an AI agent": an AI agent named "Truth GPT" (created by developer Andy Ayrey) aimed 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 upon its launch — its price skyrocketed 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 wealth myth made GOAT a hot topic in the crypto community, hailed as the "AI-powered super meme coin."

The GOAT craze revealed the power of the AI Agent Narrative in the crypto space: teams or communities conceived a story of a "self-sufficient AI" leading the project, giving the token a sci-fi-like gimmick. For example, claiming that the AI agent autonomously manages funds and executes tasks without human intervention, thus endowing the token with a sense of mystery and futurism. During this period, besides GOAT, other AI agent-themed concepts also emerged, such as TruthGPT and various so-called AI trading Agent DAOs that claimed to trade autonomously, many of which also saw short-term price surges.

However, most projects remained at the narrative stage, merely telling stories. The so-called AI agents were often just scripts with preset logic, far from true autonomous intelligent applications, let alone discussing the effectiveness of their applications. This wave of hype peaked around January 2025 and then collapsed — external events (such as Trump announcing the issuance of his personal meme coin $TRUMP in January 2025, drawing market funds) caused speculative hot money to withdraw, and the prices of coins like GOAT quickly fell. The entire AI Agent sector plummeted from the previous months' hot status to a low point.

Price Changes of $GOAT, Source: CoinMarketCap

04 Fourth Wave — The Rise of a16z's AI Ecosystem + Basic Concepts of AI Agents

After the previous waves of speculation receded, a batch of AI projects focusing more on technology and ecosystem building emerged at the end of 2024. Unlike earlier phases primarily driven by community speculation, this stage saw the emergence of AI platform projects with well-known backgrounds or serious visions. Typical examples include: ai16z and Virtuals, which are seen as representatives of the "a16z AI ecosystem" (the name dramatically mimics the well-known venture capital firm a16z). The commonality among these projects is: building AI agent infrastructure, attempting to become the "app store" for AI agents in the Web3 space.

$AI16z is a phenomenal AI meme coin that rose in November 2024, with a name referencing the well-known venture capital firm a16z. The project essentially positions itself as a decentralized AI smart trading fund based on Solana, i.e., an "AI investment DAO," primarily utilizing AI agents to gather on-chain and off-chain market information, analyze community sentiment, and automatically execute trades. 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 cap skyrocketed from zero to about 80 million USD, igniting the enthusiasm of speculators. Surprisingly, a16z founder Marc Andreessen even endorsed it on Twitter, personally retweeting the concept introduction and link of AI16z. With the backing of a well-known figure and the story of "AI investment + Meme," AI16z became the hottest crypto topic of the month.

There are many doubts in the industry regarding the high speculative nature of these projects compared to their actual implementation. However, 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 in December 2024 to evolve the project into an "AI Layer 1": launching a dedicated Launchpad for AI agents, making the ai16z token the base currency and fee medium for agent transactions, and designing node incentives and value buyback mechanisms, among others. At this stage, we can see that the project team is attempting to shift from speculation to building a sustainable ecosystem, supporting the token's value through technological strength and economic models rather than just storytelling.

During the same period, the Virtuals protocol, as another representative project, was very successful in ecological promotion. Its team constructed an engaging narrative that attracted numerous developers to create AI agent projects on its platform, as well as 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 USD, with the FDV of the token corresponding to the Eliza framework reaching about half of that, amounting to several billion USD. Other standout projects (such as AIXBT) had peak market caps reaching hundreds of millions of USD. During this time, capital assigned extremely high valuations to "AI agent platform/framework" projects. However, the user scale and actual revenue at that time had not kept pace with the valuations — for example, despite claiming ecological prosperity, Virtuals reportedly had daily actual revenue of 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, demonstrating that merely having grand visions and narratives cannot support prices.

Therefore, as of now, the representatives of the fourth wave have not genuinely become the "app store" for AI agents, but rather more like platforms that concentrated on AI Agent Memes, such as Pump.fun. While everyone waits to see if they can break out and be reborn, the fifth wave has surged in.

05 Fifth Wave — A Blooming Landscape of Practical Applications

After a brief lull, the WEB3 AI sector began to heat up again in early Q2 2025, and this time the hotspots have clearly started to "detach from the virtual to the real": there are focuses on new generation AI agent real platforms and tools; new AI ecological chains specifically suitable for AI project operations; decentralized features for utilizing user data for value storage; and even combinations of WEB3 AI with other high-tech tracks like robotics. These all present a "blooming landscape," and we look forward to the day when these practical projects can truly have a "hundred flowers blooming." Below, we list some examples from the fifth wave for your reference:

• Zerebro

As an AI agent project within 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 at the end of 2024 the development of an agent issuance platform called "Zentients," envisioning the use of the ZEREBRO token as a medium for the costs and value returns of creating AI agents. The scenario depicted by Zerebro is that anyone can generate their own AI agent (such as an email assistant, programming assistant, trading robot, 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 the ZEREBRO token continued to rise in early 2025. Especially after experiencing initial adjustments, in April 2025, ZEREBRO surged 400% within two days, attracting significant market attention. During the same period, other related projects also experienced explosions: for example, the $AIOS token, claimed to be an "Agent Operating System," rebounded tenfold, and the Crypto AI sector, which had been quiet for months, became active again. Investors' imaginations are shifting from a single AI agent to the underlying supporting platforms: the market is beginning to chase projects that provide standard interfaces, communication protocols, and deployment environments for AI agents, hoping they will become the bridge connecting Web2 AI technology with Web3 value capture. Although Zerebro has planned rich functionalities, the actual products have not fully landed during the frenzy phase, and many application scenarios remain in testing or demo stages.

Just last week, Zerebro once again ignited the market, but in a bizarre way that is both laughable and tragic: Zerebro's co-founder Jeffy Yu posted a "suicide" video online, followed by an obituary platform publishing a related obituary, which was also featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. This then triggered a new meme token, LLJEFFY, to surge to over 100 million U, only to plummet back to nearly zero. Some KOLs discovered that on-chain data showed Yu's associated wallet still had active funds after his reported death, leading them to conclude that this was a new exit scam. If the "fake death event" is real, then Zerebro is likely just another meme being played with, and we can all give it the middle finger; such limitless operations are a disgrace to crypto.

• Metis's AI Chain Hyperion + LazAI

Metis is an established ETH Layer 2 project, and perhaps the most profound impression people have of it is that it is the only project where ETH founder Vitalik Buterin's mother and sister-in-law are founding partners. Since 2021, it has not missed any major surges, with a hundredfold increase during the bull market in early 2022 and a tenfold increase in early 2024, although its price has now returned to historical lows. The reason Metis intersects with AI is that on May 7, it officially announced that its "AI Chain Hyperion" testnet would go live on May 14. Due to the Metis team's low profile, we had to gather a lot of information to understand what the AI Chain Hyperion and AI Chain LazAI are (yes, they plan to go all-in on AI and create two AI chains).

The emergence of the first AI chain, Hyperion, is to address the issues that all L1 and L2 chains encounter: WEB3 AI projects require larger-scale computing power to meet frequent read/write and computational state needs while maintaining decentralization, which the previous EVM environment could not support. The newly released Hyperion solution from the Metis team can be simply understood as: it has reshaped a new chain most suitable for WEB3 AI projects or gaming projects (both requiring high-performance computing) to operate, solving the problems that development teams may encounter through the Metis SDK and Alith AI Agent framework. Hyperion still uses $Metis as the only token, which makes us more inclined to believe that the Metis team genuinely wants to do something substantial in the AI sector rather than just shouting lofty slogans. This is likely the reason for the recent stirrings in the price of Metis tokens.

If the first AI chain, Hyperion, is merely a trial run for the Metis team in the AI field, as we have heard other public chains proclaiming their goals to create high-performance AI public chains, then the mysterious second AI chain, LazAI, represents their formal campaign into the AI sector. LazAI will be a brand new Layer 1, aiming to establish a value pricing mechanism for the data contributions of individuals (including both personal and institutional) in AI. At first glance, this sounds complex, but let me give you an example to clarify: everyone knows that large companies like Alibaba or ByteDance are profiting by selling your personal data privacy to merchants, but you have no way to counter this unless you stop online shopping or scrolling through short videos. However, LazAI utilizes the decentralized characteristics of blockchain, ensuring that individual data still belongs to the individual. Originally, using AI requires inputting a large amount of individual data, which may be very valuable to certain projects or merchants, allowing users to gain the value of their own data, which can be reflected through tokens. Moreover, LazAI can rely on algorithms to distinguish the value of different data, thereby minimizing the pain points in the crypto industry where studios or data farmers forcefully inject useless data. Therefore, "decentralized classification storage of personal data + data value pricing mechanism" will become LazAI's greatest feature, which we believe should be the direction the entire industry strives for: how to leverage the inherent characteristics of WEB3 to address some shortcomings of the WEB2 world.

It must be said that such a grand narrative of Hyperion + LazAI can only be boldly proclaimed by a project team like Metis, which has a strong foundation and credibility, and we can believe that they may indeed be working towards this goal.

To be continued.

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