Author: Tomb

Compiled by: TechFlow

Key points of this post

  • Review the development of agents and AI in the past few months;

  • Review some of the obvious investment opportunities in the market;

  • Taking a break during the New Year, I observed many things from an outsider’s perspective and reflected deeply on past successes and mistakes;

  • Next, I will try to share all of my thoughts as clearly as possible;

Review of the development of intelligent agents and AI in the past few months

AI Agent Review

  • Very happy with the performance at the end of last year.

  • From September to early October, we got very early into many narrative areas around AI, agents, and infrastructure.

  • Without over-complicating the analysis of these trends, it is clear that these are the next phases of the AI supercycle (with more important catalysts to come).

  • This mature judgment comes from long-term experience in capturing narratives in the market. When you are able to identify these trends, you can quickly invest money without much hesitation.

  • Even now, I still see some people arguing about trivial issues such as the packaging application of ChatGPT, the specific functions of an agent, and the failure of a protocol to respond in time.

  • But does it really matter? We are here to make money, not to prove ourselves right.

  • The key is to know what stage of the market cycle you are in. Each cycle has its own unique rules and strategies.

  • This is why many people hold on to old projects for too long, thus missing out on some hot trends in the “simple model”. What I mean by “old” is not really old, but “relatively old” relative to the rapid pace of industry development.

  • Remember, new hot spots emerge every day and money flows faster and faster - if teams can't clearly communicate their ideas or show a clear roadmap, money will flow to protocols that have better communication capabilities and can quickly get projects off the ground.

  • When I first came across Goat, I recognized its potential and followed it very early on — I was surprised that it took so long for others to migrate to Base via cross-chain bridges or start exploring agents on Sol.

  • This phenomenon is largely due to the "Mid Curve Effect" (over-complex thinking) and market panic. If you have not realized these problems until now, you need to seriously reflect on the reasons.

  • I feel so grateful for the past few months because I haven’t experienced too many serious losses.

  • I seized the opportunity when ai16z had a market value of 30 million, and also entered the market when aixbt had a market value of 30 million. In addition, there were also layout opportunities for some game and dialogue projects when their market value was below 10 million.

  • Of course, there are some missed opportunities, such as Zerebro, Fartcoin, Snai, Swarm Node, etc. But it doesn’t matter, it’s impossible to seize all opportunities, and the important thing is to reflect on why they were missed and why they succeeded.

quality

As always, quality is the key to success:

  • High-level developers;

  • Excellent branding;

  • Innovative ideas or unique technologies that provide competitive advantages;

  • cohesive, high-quality communities;

  • Clear and valuable information and communication;

These are the core elements we focus on. If two or more of the above are missing, there is a risk. Why? Because there will definitely be other teams that can do it better.

For example, in the current environment of Virtuals, I will invest quickly (i.e. "all in") in the early stages as long as there is a high-quality team launching an AI agent or related infrastructure. The identity of the developer is transparent (doxxed), they have been deeply involved in this field for more than 5 years, and have participated in multiple protocols - as long as I find such a team in the early stage, I will decisively enter the market.

  • In fact, you don't even need to invest a lot of money to get a considerable return. For example, I discovered the GEKKO project when it was just launched, and its market value was only $4 million. Because it was developed by the Axal team and received investment from a16z - this was enough for me, so I invested decisively. As a result, its market value increased from 4 million to 40 million, and the returns were very considerable. I believe it will grow further. Turning $4,000 into $40,000 is a year's salary for some people. Sometimes, you don't need to invest huge amounts of money, and $2,000 or $4,000 can bring quite considerable returns. Don't underestimate the potential of these funds.

  • Another one I have been planning is Acolyt, which has a very strong team and a similar narrative to GEKKO. I have mentioned before that if there are 100 different AI agents that can provide high-quality market intelligence (alpha), the only thing that can distinguish them is identity, user interface (UI), brand, developer level, etc. - this is no different from other areas of life.

That's what I'm looking for: teams that have been focused on building for a long time - top developers who are passionate, keep pushing, and keep launching new products. They are the only place where my money will go, and I won't consider other places.

Things to avoid

  • Avoid undisclosed one-person development teams, especially when building speculative artificial intelligence projects, where the risk is high.

  • Another thing to be wary of is artificial intelligence projects initiated by individual “influencers.” Such projects are often abandoned soon after being announced because the developers realize that the responsibilities are beyond their expectations.

The struggling narrative

  • I have to admit that there are some narratives that I personally like very much, but they have indeed encountered some difficulties in their development. This is not to say that these projects are bad, but they are advancing relatively slowly.

It is really frustrating to invest money in a seemingly promising project only to find that it does not perform as expected while other projects around it achieve 2-3 times growth in a short period of time.

  • These projects are often "slow-burning" or eventually become "auxiliary experiments" for other projects.

  • Here are a few examples, like $GRIFT + $REALIS + $OMEGA . I still hold some of them, but from a practical point of view, I should have cut losses earlier and moved funds to stronger AI infrastructure projects, such as REI and ARC, etc. These projects have more obvious potential and more stable performance.

  • At the time, I invested about $100,000 to $120,000 in these “experimental” projects, expecting them to take up a larger market share. But looking back, projects like Griffain, which are backed by Solana, are clearly stronger, while projects like Realis need more time to mature, perhaps because their ideas are too advanced or their teams are smaller.

  • Reflect on it, when you get 20-30 times the return on a project like $GAME, you will feel that you have enough capital to "test the waters" or take risks, so you don't care too much about putting money on a slow-moving project. But in fact, as a trader or investor, we should not treat our funds like this.

In the coming weeks, I will continue to share observations about agents and market operations, while also keeping an eye on the next possible market rotation opportunity. We all know that no narrative can last forever. This does not necessarily mean that the narratives of agents are over, but they may be entering a new stage of development.

Please remember that the market is changing very fast now, almost accelerating in all directions. If you relax, you may be eliminated. Pay attention to market dynamics every day, because the "hot potato" is getting hotter and hotter.

Reviewing some of the obvious investment opportunities in the market

I won’t list every example of a market opportunity that is obvious to some people but not to others, but I will share some of the main ones and how I navigate these narratives.

VIRTUALS

When I first saw GOAT take off, I was fascinated by it. I immediately invested in it after realizing its potential. But then, I completely missed out on $ZEREBRO and $BULLY, which have both performed very well so far. This made me start looking for the next possible opportunity more urgently.

That’s when I discovered aixbt . When I learned about its features and positioning, I immediately realized that this was the next project worth paying attention to, especially after seeing $GOAT, $ZEREBRO, and $BULLY discussed in the community. I noticed that the market was gradually shifting from entertainment projects to practical projects. This shift is what made me start paying attention to projects such as Base, Virtuals, $GAME, and $CONVO.

In fact, it was Jeff 's article about how Virtuals could become a billion-dollar protocol that made me decide. The token economics, branding, and ecological advantages of the Base chain mentioned in the article further convinced me that Virtuals has great potential.

By studying $GAME, I was finally able to properly understand the concept of "frameworks". This knowledge allowed me to seize many excellent investment opportunities in the following weeks. Although I am not a technical geek and cannot fully understand all the details, I am very interested in this field and am willing to learn as much as possible about it.

Interestingly, I didn't invest in Virtuals when it was worth $500-600 million.

I think that when you identify the potential of an ecosystem, such as it may grow to a scale of 5 billion, 10 billion or even 20 billion US dollars, you need to focus on two key points: one is the "pioneers", and the other is those agents that continue to occupy the minds of users .

For example, $LUNA is a typical pioneer, and $VADER is the first DAO/ALPHA project.

There are many projects worth watching in this ecosystem. For me, the team is the most critical factor, followed by concept and practicality, and finally brand and identity. These three form the "holy trinity".

Here are some great projects worth looking into:

> $WAI ;

> $ACOLYT ;

> $SEKOIA ;

> $GEKKO ;

These projects are all worth keeping an eye on, especially those that are part of the Agentstarter ecosystem.

AI16z

It may sound random, but when I first came across and promoted daos.fun , I almost invested in AI16z directly because of the name. After digging into projects like Truth Terminal, which Marc funded, I was convinced that this was a project worth paying attention to.

When I learned that AI16z DAO was attracting top developers from around the world and was committed to accelerating the construction of its ecosystem and framework, I became more convinced that it had great potential. The activity on GitHub continued to rise, and the momentum of the entire project was also rapidly accumulating, which was by no means something that could be explained by "mid-curve thinking".

Despite some FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) during this period, their test projects in the intelligent agent ecosystem, $ELIZA and $DEGENAI, are very promising. For example, Eliza has reached a market cap of $160 million, while @degenspartanai has reached $100 million. As AI16z continues to expand, both projects are expected to grow further - these are very obvious investment opportunities.

Other Ecosystems

In Agentic Outlook One, I break down each major Launchpad/Protocol and its Alpha Agents or Beta Projects:

The following ecosystems are also worth paying attention to:

  • $UOS

  • $AIMONICA

  • $STOIC

  • Moemate | $MATES (coming soon)

  • We also covered Nebula | $MOE in its early days, growing from $5 million to $25 million.

Other ecosystems worth noting:

Many of these projects have grown several fold.

The full analysis can be viewed here: Link

The list could go on and on, and the potential for these projects would be even higher - they are all very clear investment opportunities.

However, I still hold some other projects that I think have potential, such as $GRIFT and $REALIS, etc. I believe they only need more time and some adjustments to achieve good performance.

Here are some projects I didn’t have time to analyze in depth, but they are also worth paying attention to:

Among these projects, $REI in particular deserves extra attention.

In addition to the on-chain ecosystem, I am very optimistic about the combination of decentralized finance (DEFI) and agents:

  • $MODE | Mode , this is a project that I think has great potential.

  • Another thing to look forward to is the further development of Uomi .

Stick to projects with great teams, strong infrastructure , and high attention/popularity/mindshare, and you won’t go wrong.

For me, the life cycle of agents is usually short, because most projects find it difficult to maintain market attention for a long time. But in my opinion, AIXBT and GOAT are successful examples and benchmarks in the field of agents.

Why reflect on this?

Because this will help you discover the next investment opportunity worth investing in.

Precautions

  • It is worth paying attention to some early projects, such as $GNON, $PROJECT89, $AVB, etc.

  • $OPUS has lost 85% of its value and many early AI projects may have hit bottom.

  • We need to keep an eye on whether these projects are still under active development, but also remember that the potential for AI infrastructure (Infra) and agents is enormous.

  • New ideas and concepts emerge every week, and these new projects usually have stronger teams and better brands, so we need to continue scanning the entire market.

  • I’m not saying these projects are bad, but I’m trying to emphasize that the market moves very quickly - many traders who experience 80-100x returns will quickly take profits and move on to the next more attractive opportunity, whether it’s in areas such as swarms, decentralized science (DeSci), or DEFI agents.

  • Excellent teams always find ways to keep themselves relevant in the market over the long term.

Finally, there are some trends worth noting:

  • There are many hackathons going on right now, which have spawned some very interesting ideas and projects. Participating in these events can not only help you expand your horizons, but also give you a better understanding of future technology trends.

Data sources for AI agents:

In the next few days, we can discuss together the future development direction of the field of intelligent agents so that we can seize the opportunity when the market narrative changes.