A bad market has one upside—it shows you who's still genuinely working hard. The first accelerator program by @Talus_Labs for their on-chain AI agent infrastructure, Talus/acc, wrapped up last week. It was co-hosted by the Sui Foundation and Dubai-based Cicada Capital, with over 50 teams worldwide submitting applications. Right now, even many veteran projects are lying low, yet over 50 teams were willing to submit proposals, go through two rounds of screening, and compete for a spot in a four-week accelerator program. That’s pretty rare in the current market conditions. What interests me more are the two paths they’ve laid out for teams: one is the Demo Day pitch event, where Cicada introduces them to 49 VC firms; the other is direct product integration discussions with Talus, bringing them into the ecosystem. The second path is the real game-changer. Most accelerators end at Demo Day—awards are handed out, and everyone goes their separate ways. But this one has designed "graduation" as the starting point for "joining the team." The integration proposals submitted by teams will actually go through internal reviews at Talus and be pushed forward. For a project focused on AI agent infrastructure, the applications running within the ecosystem are the foundation. The top three winners also reflect their selection criteria: Superstake, an AI agent battle gaming platform; Agama, focused on RWA private credit yields; and Noodles, an AI trading tool for on-chain data. Judging by the standards, they clearly don’t buy into token narratives. What they care about are GTM (go-to-market strategies), revenue models, and real adoption data—all three winners are businesses where you can instantly verify if users are willing to pay. Talus is keeping a steady pace, and I’m looking forward to seeing them build momentum. Projects that keep working hard during a bear market are always worth keeping an eye on for the long term.