How to plan and seize opportunities as early as possible in the AI Agent cycle?

Author: 0xJeff , Crypto KOL

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Back in October, Virtuals introduced the concept of tokenizing AI agents. It was a bold move, but most people didn’t care at the time because it was too advanced.

Today Virtuals is bringing 50x, 100x returns to many agents, and suddenly everyone is paying attention.

But the problem is that everyone is focusing on 50-100 times the return. If you want similar excess returns, you must act early. You need strong confidence and patience to lay out before others discover it.

If you get in now, you might see a 5-10x return - still solid, but nowhere near the 50-100x returns that early adopters are seeing. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late, you need to be strategic. “Alpha” from two months ago is no longer alpha. The virtuals ecosystem is crowded and the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

What should I do now?

First, don’t limit yourself to one ecosystem. It doesn’t matter if it’s Base vs. Solana or Virtuals vs. ai16z — there are opportunities in both ecosystems. The key is to stay flexible and look for value, not tribalism.

What should you look for when choosing an agent?

Essentially, the key to a successful proxy is uniqueness and utility. Without utility, the proxy token will behave like 95% of all memecoins that become irrelevant after the hype cycle.

Agencies need to have a unique product that provides tangible value. Bonus points if the team really understands the attention game:

• You can create a compelling legend or story around your agent

• Release features quickly and continuously

• Actively meeting community needs

When these factors are in place, it’s possible for an agency to find product-market fit (PMF), achieving product-market fit, and then teams that continue to execute and innovate (like aixbt) can dominate their market segments and become the backbone of the ecosystem.

Here are the narrative and practical aspects that CT currently values most:

1. Finding Alpha

There is a great demand for brokers that provide trading signals and insights. For example, aixbt focuses on providing valuable alpha to users.

Other alpha agents worth noting:

• Rei: Provides comprehensive token and sentiment analysis with detailed charts
• Agent Scarlett: Focuses on token analysis, analyzing pros and cons and providing insights
• 3σ: covers complete project segmentation and interpretation
• kwantxbt: Good at technical analysis, provides trading assistants, continuously monitors market dynamics, and provides real-time analysis and suggestions
• $TRUST: perp proxy, you can set entry price, stop loss, etc.

2. Invest in DAO

A hedge fund-style DAO, run by a human or AI agent, that uses its capital to make investments.

Example:

• daos.world ecosystem on Base
• VaderAI, WAI Combinator, sekoia_virtuals, aixcb on Virtuals
• The daos.fun Ecosystem on Solana

Investing in DAOs is powerful because they offer:

• Endorsement of high-quality agents
• Distribution channels for portfolio items
• Early stage and OTC rounds of tokens usually bring outsized returns

3. On-chain transactions

On-chain transactions are a narrative that resonates deeply with the CT crowd, as there is a hustle and bustle to be had watching someone turn $1,000 into $1,000,000.

It's not just about the money, it's the excitement of seeing others work hard and succeed.

The first iterations of trading agents will harness this energy. They will focus on portfolio growth, demonstrating their frameworks and strategies in real time. Although this is an early narrative, it is already taking shape among some players.

Example:

• Gekko AI: A self-improving trading agent on Virtuals, leveraging Axal’s infrastructure to deliver results.
• Big Tony: Built on Cod3x, focusing on autonomous execution of professional trades.
• Project Plutus: Combining real-time analysis with automated DCA execution.
• It is expected that on-chain transaction proxy will become the focus of market attention in Q1/Q2 2025.

4. Development-focused practical tools

As the ecosystem grows, the need for developer tools becomes critical.

Example:

• SOLENG: monitors pull requests, performs initial reviews, and serves as an AI judge for hackathons
• H4CK Terminal: White hat agent for bounties and vulnerability checks
• CertaiK: Security audit for proxies

5. Privacy and Confidentiality (TEE)

The Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) pioneered by Marvin Tong and Phala Network on Solana enables fully autonomous agents.

Example use cases/cool experiments:

• aiPool’s “Unruggable ICO” (Through TEE technology, investors can send funds to the agent, which will calculate and distribute the corresponding number of ICO tokens in a secure environment)
• SPORE: TEE agents that have inherited traits and are passed on to offspring.
• Neural network experiments such as DeepWorm.

There is no TEE agent on Virtuals yet, and the first ones to come out will surely soar in value.

6. Gameplay Beyond Narrative

Predict future narratives in advance and you can get more than a hundred times the return. This was the strategy when I entered Virtuals when the market value was less than $30 million.

Emerging Narratives in 2025:

• DeFi Proxy
• NSFW Agent (AI Companion)
• Robotics
• data
• Gamification of Agents
• Swarm/collective intelligence
• Infrastructure

Related reading: Interpretation of the development status of ai16z and Virtuals: They occupy more than half of the AI Agent market share and both face the challenge of ecological centralization