Alpha Discovery Manual under the AI Wave: Choose MEME with Strong Wealth Effect or Early Protocol Framework?

In my last article, I shared the logical relationship between AI narratives such as AI DePIN, AI MEME, and AI Agent. However, when exploring the potential Alpha of AI, the question arises: should I choose AI MEME that may come from a conspiracy group with a strong wealth effect but frequently replaced? Should I choose a protocol framework that is still in the early stages of building infra? Or should I choose some cool single AI with specific application scenarios? To be honest, I was confused for a long time. The following are just some superficial opinions:

1) There is no doubt about the big trend. AI Agent is neither an “asset” nor an “application”, but a new paradigm of “narrative” in the large-scale blockchain ecosystem.

In other words, the advent of AI Agent is like the DeFi Summer in blockchain in 2020. It will generate a huge new "bubble" narrative cycle of Build+Speculation around the issuance, custody, and trading of AI Agent's tokens; infrastructure construction, framework, standards, communication, stacking, SaaS packaging; Application development, operation, aggregation, iteration, implementation, etc.

DeFi has driven the glory of the last bull market, and has stimulated market vitality around the three pillars of stablecoins + lending + DeX derivatives. According to incomplete statistics, the total locked value of multi-chain DeFI is 134.6 billion, the number of stablecoins in circulation has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, the monthly trading volume of DEX has reached 372.3 billion US dollars, and the lending volume is nearly 20 billion US dollars, etc. The market size and ecological importance of the entire DeFi industry are all in these data that have grown amazingly and are still being updated, which does not include the various chains and applications generated by DeFi, such as MCAP\FDV and other broader data.

In my opinion, AI Agent will also create a new round of narrative miracles that may even surpass the DeFi narrative. 200B, 500B of imagination space? Don’t always think about the new DeFi Summer 2.0. Please keep up with the current AI Agent Summer narrative trend and don’t fall behind.

2) Based on this logic, let’s look at the current “chaos” in the AI Agent market:

1. Community verbal battles and competition for leadership among AI MEMEs such as$GOAT , $FARTCOIN, and $ACT ;

2. The dispute over AI Agent framework standards such as $VIRTUAL and $AI16Z;

3. The battle for derivative infra such as the issuance and circulation of assets such as $VVAIFU and $GRIFFAIN; 4) The battle for single AI Agent applications such as $AIXBT , $AVA, and $BULLY . You will find that it is still too early. The various lending platforms, derivatives, machine gun pools, governance tokens, etc. that have appeared on DeFi have at least Ethereum and other chains that provide basic execution frameworks and standards, while the AI Agent ecosystem does not even have exclusive infra conditions. From the perspective of ecological plasticity, the industry narrative opportunities brought by AI Agent are much greater than DeFi;

In other words, these chaos are not really chaos. If you are optimistic about the development of the AI Agent narrative and the direction of each sector, any asset with a certain market value and a corresponding user base is a high-quality asset before the huge AI Agent narrative explodes. The assets in the categories such as YFI, CRV, UNI, DYDX, etc. have reached FDV market value heights of tens of billions, so you don’t have to panic.

Of course, having confidence does not mean you can do whatever you want. Don’t forget that in addition to the first uncle, there are also pseudo-value assets like the second uncle, and this type of asset will always quietly invade your wallet in a manner that is more attractive in the short term but toxic in the long term.

3) Because it is indeed still in the early stages of the narrative, there is no point in persuading everyone not to participate in some AI MEMEs that are clearly operated by conspiracy groups. After all, no one knows how much wealth effect an early track can generate, and some framework standards that seem to be more valuable and have been implemented may also face the possibility of being overtaken by competitors at any time.

In short, it is difficult to give a clear logic for Alpha discovery. I will only share my personal investment research logic for reference:

1. AI MEME, only considering "leading coins" such as$GOAT with narrative origins, does not make sense. If you have to name one, it's like consensus coins such as Bitcoin came first before smart contract technology delivery coins such as Ethereum. Although the early MEME of a track is mainly speculative, its role in educating the market and cultivating user awareness cannot be ignored, just like DOGE's role in the popularization of cryptocurrency.

2. AI Agent infra is very important and is underestimated in the long run. For example, early frameworks such as $ELIZA have rich Github open source libraries and a particularly wide range of applications. Although they are indeed in their early stages and may be shunted away by other stronger framework standards at any time, their absolute advantages in open source sharing and first-mover advantage are barriers. There is a high probability that better frameworks will be on top of it, which may affect its growth height, but will definitely not eliminate it.

If we regard ELIZA as the EVM in the AI Agent era, new frameworks such as EVM++ and EVM Compatible will inevitably emerge to complement it.

3. AI Agent asset issuance, custody, and trading are currently still at the MEME-based asset issuance narrative level. It is necessary to lock in the platform value and not be confused by the "junk assets" on the platform.

The logic is very simple. AI Agent is essentially a process of AI scene value landing based on Crypto incentive mechanism. In the early stage, infra, applications, protocol framework, etc. are not mature yet. How can there be so many super applications at the level of AIXBT? What does the convenience of issuing coins bring? Understand it? In the end, it is just a bubble trap to create heat for asset issuance platforms such as VIRTUAL and VVAIFU.

Therefore, don’t chase AI Agent super applications too much, unless there is an absolute information gap. Otherwise, when you see the market value at that time, the cost performance will not be high. However, it is different if you lock in the innovative platform infra.

4. There is still a large gap in the infra construction of AI Agent. For example, early frameworks such as ELIZA only solve the problems of LLM large model and AI Agent dialogue mechanism, and are applied to application scenarios such as Twitter and Discord, but they are more about matching web2 information. It is worth looking forward to when there will be an ELIZA++ version that can connect the ELIZA framework and web3 transaction scenarios based on the public chain paradigm;

For example, although AI Agent asset issuance platforms such as Virtual and VVAIFU can issue assets quickly, they still lack a lot in the subsequent decentralized custody of assets and AMM-style intention-based transactions. When will the previously hotly discussed AI Agent+TEE private key management method mature? Can asset issuance platforms extend new gameplay in transactions, and come up with more interesting trading gameplay and incentive models?

In addition, can there be some chains that build interaction standards for AI Agents, become the Cosmos of the AI Agent era, and provide standard interoperability capabilities? Or can there be some chains that build permanent Memory modular storage for AI Agents, and build the necessary DA capabilities for AI Agents? There are also some AI Agent visualization tools, execution engines, modular combination packaging services, and so on.

With these technologies and market-driven supporting infra, will you still be anxious about a bunch of MEMEs that you don’t understand?

above.

As for the various types of layer1, high-performance chains, cross-chain infra, chain abstraction, DA combination chains, layer2, Restaking and other perfect infrastructure built on the smart contract paradigm in the past, where is the way out? In addition to the original infra landing application PMF delivery implementation problem, a breakthrough point is the new concept of "AI Agent narrative".

Therefore, any chain that can provide AI Agent with some communication protocols, DA, application development and other service capabilities is worth paying attention to. Of course, there are definitely chains that are purely for the sake of concept, but they are better than chains that are complacent and rely on their old capital.

In any case, please stay tuned to the AI Agent track and welcome the arrival of this epic bull market.