Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
In 2024, the field of "Crypto+AI" achieved unprecedented breakthrough growth. At the beginning of the year, this field consisted of only a handful of projects, but now it has become an independent track in the crypto market that cannot be ignored.
According to the latest data compiled by ChainCatcher, the total market value of assets in the crypto AI sector has exceeded the US$70 billion mark on December 7, accounting for as much as 2% of the entire crypto market, with an annual growth rate of 400%.
At the same time, the number of crypto AI projects has also shown explosive growth, currently exceeding 600, covering multiple categories of products such as decentralized AI infrastructure and AI Dapp.
Looking back at 2024, the crypto AI narrative has undergone several major changes. At the beginning of the year, the Sora project launched by OpenAI ignited the hype of crypto AI infrastructure. Subsequently, the convening of Nvidia's annual AI conference pushed decentralized GPUs to the focus of market attention, and investors began to pursue AI decentralized infrastructure. In the middle of the year, the crypto AI track ushered in an investment boom, and crypto VC institutions announced their layout. Many crypto projects received financial support, which accelerated the development and application of technology. At the end of the year, the outbreak of AI Agent Meme pushed the crypto AI narrative to a new climax.
The total market value of encrypted AI assets exceeded US$70 billion this year, and the number of related projects exceeded 600
According to the latest data from CoinMarketCap, the number of tokens included in the Crypto*AI sector has reached 355, and its total asset market value has exceeded the $70 billion mark on December 7, with a peak of $70.42 billion. Currently, affected by the overall crypto market correction trend, as of December 23, the total market value of the Crypto*AI sector has fallen back to $47 billion, and the 24-hour trading volume is still as high as $5 billion.
Looking back at the beginning of the year, the total market value of the crypto AI sector was only $17 billion. In less than a year, the total market value of the sector's assets has increased by more than 400%, once again demonstrating the booming development and huge potential of the crypto AI field.
Daniel Cheung, co-founder of Syncracy Capital, expressed his opinion on December 12 that although the current crypto AI sector only accounts for about 1% of the total market value of the crypto market, with the continuous evolution of the market cycle and the strong momentum of AI infrastructure and AI Agent, he predicts that the market value of this sector is expected to grow 10 times.
It is worth mentioning that despite the overall decline in the current crypto market, the total market value of the entire crypto market reached 3.4 trillion US dollars on December 23, and the market value of crypto AI assets still accounted for nearly 1.4% of the entire market at this time (the market value accounted for more than 2% at its peak), further proving its future market growth potential.
2024 is a critical turning point for the crypto AI field from emerging to full-scale outbreak. At the beginning of the year, the crypto AI track was still in its infancy, with a handful of projects, mainly represented by decentralized GPU projects Render (RNDR), AI infrastructure Fetch.ai (FET) and WorldCoin. However, in less than a year, the crypto AI field can be divided into multiple sub-tracks, covering decentralized GPUs, AI data platforms, AI infrastructure, AI Agents and other branch tracks, with hundreds of projects.
According to the encryption data platform Rootdata, there are currently more than 600 encryption projects containing AI terms, and this number continues to increase.
2024 Crypto AI Catalyst: External forces such as OpenAI narrative, VCs vigorously deploy, AI Agent Meme explodes
Judging from the data trend of the total market value of crypto AI assets, the growth in 2024 showed two significant peaks: the first peak occurred between February and March, while the second occurred after October, ushering in a stronger wave of growth.
During the period from February to March, the growth of the crypto AI field was mainly due to the strong stimulation brought by two landmark events in the AI field.
In February, OpenAI released the "Vincent Video" model Sora, a breakthrough achievement that has set off a disruptive change in the field of AI. At the same time, the event also greatly promoted the surge in the price of the token WLD of Worldcoin, an iris authentication encryption project led by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, which in turn led to the strong growth of the entire encrypted AI asset sector. During this period, high-quality projects such as Bittensor (TAO), an AI model incentive platform, and ARKM, an AI data platform Arkham, began to receive widespread attention from the market. The rise of these projects further ignited the investment enthusiasm of the encrypted AI market and attracted a large number of investors to pour into this emerging field full of potential.
Then, in March, the grand opening of NVIDIA's annual AI conference GTC attracted widespread attention from around the world, and pushed its market value to soar, triggering a hype for GPU chips. At the conference, the appearance of leading figures in the crypto industry, such as Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near, and Jules Urbach, founder of the distributed GPU rendering network Render Network, once again injected new vitality into the field of crypto AI. This series of events led to the emergence of conceptual projects such as decentralized GPUs, among which the once popular decentralized io.net was founded at this time.
Since then, crypto AI has officially developed into an independent track, and projects such as AI infrastructure, decentralized GPU, and decentralized AI data have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, bringing more choices and opportunities to the market.
In October, the growth of the crypto AI sector was mainly attributed to the explosion of AI Agent Meme. The emergence of AI Agent project Truth Terminal token GOAT triggered a hype of AI Agent Meme project coin issuance, and promoted the batch issuance of nearly 100 AI Agent Meme coins. This trend has led to the rapid rise of AI Agent, which has grown into an independent sub-track in the field of crypto AI. Its products include AI Agent Meme coins, AI Agent issuance platform (IAO) and AI Agent underlying infrastructure. For specific projects, please refer to ChainCatcher's "Systematic Sorting of AI Agent Track: AI Meme, Issuance Platform and Infrastructure" released in November. According to Coingecko data, as of December 23, the total market value of AI Agent track tokens has reached US$9.8 billion, accounting for about 20% of the total market value of the entire crypto AI track project (US$47 billion), and the hype is still continuing.
If the video tool Sora launched by OpenAI, the rise in Nvidia's market value and the AI summit it hosted constituted strong external driving forces for the development of the crypto AI field, then the explosive growth of AI Agent Meme was undoubtedly a fire ignited within the crypto market, accelerating the rise of this field. Under the combined effect of internal and external catalytic effects, the crypto AI track has quickly become a key area in the crypto world that cannot be ignored, and its importance is becoming increasingly significant.
In addition, in 2024, the crypto AI market ushered in an unprecedented investment boom, with major investment institutions rushing in and the investment amount rising sharply. In this field, top venture capital institutions in the crypto industry, such as Grayscale, Delphi Venture, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and a16z, have actively deployed "Crypto+AI" projects.
Among them, Delphi Ventures expressed its high optimism about the combination of Crypto and AI at the beginning of the year, and invested in a number of related projects, such as io.net, OG Labs and Mythos Ventures. a16z raised a new fund of US$6 billion, focusing on investing in the field of AI, and selected 5 crypto AI projects in its autumn crypto startup accelerator. In the second half of the year, institutions such as Pantera Capital, Grayscale, Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures also announced their entry into the field of crypto AI, setting up special funds or increasing investment. According to a report released by Messari, in the third quarter of 2024, crypto venture capital institutions injected more than US$213 million into AI projects, a month-on-month increase of 250% and a year-on-year increase of 340%.
The market prospect of “Crypto for AI” is greater than that of “AI for Crypto”
At present, the encryption AI products on the market can be mainly divided into two forms: "AI for Crypto" and "Crypto for AI".
The former "AI for Crypto" means empowering Crypto with AI, and mainly focuses on applying AI technology to crypto products, improving user experience or enhancing product performance by integrating AI elements. For example, using AI code optimization and security auditing: AI technology can automatically detect and analyze the code of Web3 projects, discover potential security vulnerabilities and errors, and improve the security and stability of the project; participate in on-chain revenue strategies: use AI algorithms to analyze market trends and user behaviors, formulate more efficient on-chain revenue strategies, and help crypto users get higher returns; integrate AI chatbots to answer user questions and improve user experience; use AI Agent to eliminate obstacles in on-chain user experience, such as automatic trading, asset management, etc., so that users can participate in the crypto market more conveniently.
"Crypto for AI" focuses on using encryption technology to empower the AI industry, and using the unique advantages of blockchain technology to solve or improve certain aspects of the AI industry. For example, the privacy and transparency of blockchain technology can solve the privacy and security issues of AI models in the process of data collection, processing and storage; through the use of model assetization, the community can own or use AI models in a decentralized manner; through the blockchain's Token technology, idle computing resources can be aggregated to form a computing market, reduce the cost of AI model training, and improve the utilization efficiency of computing resources.
In summary, the essence of Web3 technology lies in its decentralized blockchain infrastructure. Relying on the operation of the Token economic system, the autonomous execution of smart contracts, and the powerful performance of distributed technology, it not only ensures the precise definition of data ownership, but also greatly improves the transparency and efficiency of the business model with the help of the Token incentive model. This feature is like a good medicine, providing an effective solution to the common problems in the AI industry, such as data opacity and ambiguous business models. This coincides with the macro concept of "AI aims to improve production efficiency, while Web3 focuses on optimizing production relations."
Therefore, industry insiders generally reach a consensus: "Crypto for AI" shows a broader prospect and potential in market application compared with "AI for Crypto". This trend has also prompted more and more AI industry insiders to actively seek to use encryption technology to overcome the challenges and problems faced by the AI industry.
Building an encrypted AI ecosystem around the three elements of AI: data, computing power and algorithms
Based on the three core elements that drive the development of AI big models, "data, computing power and algorithms", we can further subdivide them into data, computing power and algorithm model products covering infrastructure and applications. Among them, data is the basis for training and optimizing AI models; algorithms refer to the mathematical models and program logic that drive AI systems; computing power refers to the computing resources required to execute these algorithms, and these three elements are also necessary conditions for the continuous updating and iteration of models.
The specific product forms within the encrypted AI product ecosystem include the following aspects:
At the data level, encrypted AI data projects cover data collection, storage, and processing. First, in terms of data acquisition, in order to ensure the richness and diversity of data, some encrypted AI projects use the Token economic mechanism to encourage users to share their private or proprietary data. For example, the Grass project encourages data providers through a reward mechanism, Sahara AI assetizes AI data and launches a dedicated data market, and Vana provides special or customized data sets for AI applications in the form of a data pool, etc. In terms of data processing, decentralized data annotation platforms contribute high-quality training data sets to developers, thereby improving the reinforcement learning and fine-tuning mechanisms of AI models. For example, Fraction AI (which completed a $6 million financing on December 18), Alaya AI, and Public AI provide developers with high-quality training data sets, thereby optimizing the reinforcement learning and fine-tuning process of AI models. As for data storage, solutions such as Filecoin and Arweave ensure the security and persistence of data.
At the computing power level, the training and reasoning of AI models cannot be performed without the support of powerful GPU computing resources. As the complexity of AI models increases, the demand for GPU computing resources is also rising. Faced with the challenges of insufficient supply of high-quality GPU resources in the market, rising costs, and longer waiting times, decentralized GPU computing networks have emerged. These networks create open markets and GPU aggregation platforms, allowing anyone (such as Bitcoin miners) to contribute their idle GPU computing power to perform AI tasks and receive rewards through tokens. Representative projects include Akash, Render, Gensyn, io.net, and Hyperbolic. In addition, projects such as Exabits and GAIB tokenize physical GPUs and convert them into financial digital assets on the chain, further promoting the decentralization and liquidity of computing power.
At the algorithm model level, the decentralized AI algorithm network currently on the market is essentially a decentralized AI algorithm service market that connects many AI models with different expertise and knowledge. When users ask questions, the market can intelligently select the most suitable AI model to provide answers. Representative products such as Bittensor, which brings together various AI models in the form of subnets to output high-quality content for users; and Pond selects the best decentralized models in the form of competition points, and motivates each model contributor by tokenizing the AI model, thereby promoting the innovation and optimization of AI algorithms.
From this point of view, the current crypto market has built a thriving crypto AI ecosystem around the three pillars of AI: "data, computing power and algorithms".
What are the benefits of the crypto AI track in 2025?
However, since the AI Agent Meme market became popular in October, AI Agent-related products have become the new favorites in the crypto AI market, such as projects such as Talus Network, which announced in November that it had completed a $6 million financing with $150 million, and officially built a construction framework and infrastructure specifically for AI Agents.
In addition, the AI Agent Meme craze has not only ignited a new hype in the crypto AI track, but also prompted the market to gradually shift its focus from the original infrastructure areas of the crypto AI track, such as decentralized data and GPU, to the enthusiastic pursuit of AI Agent applications. For example, the market value of ai16z has exceeded US$1 billion, and this craze is still continuing to heat up.
In the 2025 crypto industry trend outlook released recently by many institutions, a16z, VanEck, Bitwise, Hashed, Blockworks, Messari, Framework and other institutions have expressed optimism about the development of the crypto and AI markets, and particularly pointed out that AI Agent-related products will usher in explosive growth in 2025.
At the same time, the popularity of the external AI field is also continuing to rise. On December 23, Elon Musk's AI company xAI announced that it had completed another $6 billion in new financing, and its valuation soared to $40 billion, further promoting the prosperity of the AI market.
On the narrative level, OpenAI is undergoing a transformation from GPT to general artificial intelligence AI Agent. It is reported that OpenAI plans to launch a new AI Agent product "Operator" in January 2025, which can automatically perform complex operations such as writing code, travel booking, and e-commerce shopping. It is expected that it will once again set off the AI market like Sora in early 2024. In addition, Nvidia's annual AI Summit will also be held in March 2025, which is also the focus of the encryption and AI industry.
Every time Web2 companies in the AI field such as NVIDIA and OpenAI upgrade their major models, it will ignite the hot spots in the AI track, attract new capital influx, and further detonate the crypto AI track.
At the policy level, US President-elect Trump has announced the appointment of former PayPal executive David O. Sacks as the White House's head of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency affairs, responsible for guiding the government to formulate policies in the fields of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. This person has dual investment experience in the encryption and AI industries, and has participated in investments in many encryption companies and AI companies such as Multicoin. Naturally, it is believed that the policies he formulates will promote the integration of encryption and AI.
