Opinion: Despite significant drawdowns, the AI Agent narrative continues on a smooth path forward
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Opinion: Despite significant drawdowns, the AI Agent narrative continues on a smooth path forward
AI Agent represents the hope of an entire village—the momentum has only just begun to explode, and there is no fundamental basis for halting or declaring an end at this point.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Haotian
No doubt many have been disoriented by the prolonged market downturn, casting a shadow even over the once vibrant new narrative of AI Agents. Countless thoughts boil down to one question: Is the AI Agent narrative already over? Frankly, I don't know whether token prices have bottomed out, but the evolution of the AI Agent story remains wide open. Here are a few thoughts:
1) Little comfort can be offered—everyone is in the same boat. This wave has inflicted continuous portfolio drawdowns on all who entered with optimism and faith in AI Agents.
The core reason lies in the fact that while primary markets have developed clear "value investment" directions around AI infrastructure, frameworks, standards, and applications, secondary markets remain overly meme-driven. Teams appear amateurish, and overall, risks in the AI Agent space still far outweigh opportunities amid the chaos.
Thus, under uncertain macro conditions and Bitcoin’s directionless trend, the AI Agent sector—as a novel on-chain frontier—has naturally become one of the first targets for capital flight and risk-off behavior. This leaves an already liquidity-constrained sector ill-equipped to withstand broad market volatility. As a result, 50% drawdowns or near-total collapses seem inevitable. But remember: precisely because of this, once market conditions stabilize and momentum returns, AI Agents will likely be among the first sectors to take off.
2) All signs indicate that the momentum behind the AI Agent narrative has only just begun to emerge—it won’t fizzle out now. On one hand, a growing number of AI startups from Web2 are increasingly recognizing the potential opportunities in Web3, leading more high-quality teams and projects to explore new possibilities within the space. On the other hand, most Web3 projects stuck in stale narratives are now latching onto the AI Agent story as a path toward breakthroughs, with numerous well-known VCs and established Web3 teams actively planning and incubating new initiatives.
In short, AI Agents represent the collective hope of the ecosystem—their momentum has only started to build and lacks any fundamental basis for premature termination. Especially as VCs and mature project teams enter en masse, they will shake up the current disorder caused by amateurish teams, raising technical barriers (standardization) and intensifying competition. For retail investors, this means improved stability and maturity in the sector.
3) The #ai16z and #Virtual AI Agent camps have both revealed their flaws during this turbulent period—ai16z faces disarray in resource integration, while Virtual’s closed-source ecosystem shows uncertainty in long-term sustainability. After such volatility, stepping back from FOMO into冷静 reflection is actually beneficial. Over-glorifying any single force is detrimental to unleashing greater future momentum.
After all, ai16z as a major commercial IP serves more as a symbolic icon; true open-source innovation and community vitality define its real future. Regardless of personal conduct issues raised by market actors like @shawmakesmagic, as long as developer communities continue building around the ElizaOS framework, ai16z’s potential remains boundless.
Virtual’s closed-source model suffers from inherent positive/negative spiral dynamics in its tokenomics, which are especially evident during bull runs and corrections alike. This reflects its speculative nature outweighing actual application value. What I care more about is how Virtual’s closed model can produce more high-quality standalone AI applications like @aixbt_agent.
4) In just the past three months, the AI Agent space has hastily cycled through AI memes, standalone AI apps, AI frameworks and standards, AI on-chain engineering, AI metaverse, DeFai, and more. Such rapid iteration is actually dangerous. Take frameworks and standards—for all the hype, they still reek of “promising pie in the sky.” The sector is still at the stage of shifting user mindshare via standalone AI applications. Without a rich application market, obsessing over frameworks and standards is meaningless.
Ultimately, the market's valuation framework for AI Agents is distorted. Many assume that seemingly abstract directions—like frameworks, standards, or metaverse—are inherently more valuable, but that’s not true.
The foundation of AI Agent development must be “application-first.” Any concept or direction not rooted in real applications is futile. If after a round of hype we’re left with nothing but rubble, then clearly, standalone AI applications will become the next battleground. Multimodal interaction, AI metaverse, DeFai—all fine to speculate on, but first, show us your Agent in action.
5) The overall trend of “on-chain integration” for AI Agents will persist, but now it’s time for阶段性 engineering delivery. Currently, the ElizaOS framework offers only basic practical solutions in areas like Memory and Character. Incorporating decentralized blockchain principles into full-scale on-chain integration presents significant challenges.
For example, DA (Data Availability): traditional Layer2 achieves limited DA scalability through off-chain zk proofs and on-chain distributed verification. But how do we zk-proof dynamic LLM prompts and outputs? How do we verify data availability over extended periods? These are massive engineering undertakings.
Oracles: feeding real-time on-chain and off-chain data to AI Agents may sound simple, but balancing timeliness and computational cost, handling the complexity of on-chain data, and ensuring trustworthiness of off-chain inputs—all pose huge challenges.
Therefore, I remain convinced that “on-chain integration” will remain the dominant theme for AI Agent evolution. However, the key lies in delivering tangible, scalable, and verifiable solutions. Simply porting old blockchain narratives onto AI Agents isn’t enough—there’s still much work needed in detailed engineering implementation.
That’s all.
While the AI Agent space will likely remain chaotic for the foreseeable future, it exists as a redemption path for outdated narratives—meaning the market will scrutinize its every move with extreme rigor.
To those attempting to transplant VC coins with high FDVs into AI Agent domains, to elitist extractors like AICC, to bad-faith actors treating Web3 merely as a fundraising channel—let me offer a warning: the rise of AI Agents is ultimately a grassroots逆袭. Success comes from the community, failure comes from alienating it. Projects that fail to align community interests and co-build value won’t last.
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Haotian | CryptoInsight
