Virtuals faces "culture shock" on Solana's first day, with only 8.3% of Agents graduating, as data struggles against market volatility
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Virtuals faces "culture shock" on Solana's first day, with only 8.3% of Agents graduating, as data struggles against market volatility
Just as AI Agents are facing a cooling market, Virtuals Protocol's Solana-based multichain expansion plan appears to be suffering from "incompatibility," with not only low graduation rates but also insufficient market participation.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Nancy, PANews
In the early hours of today (February 12), Solana Degens sat for hours in front of their computers, eagerly awaiting Virtuals Protocol's official launch on Solana. However, this largest AI Agent issuance platform on Base failed to replicate its previous wealth effect. Amid a cooling period for AI Agents, Virtuals Protocol’s multi-chain expansion appears to be suffering from “incompatibility,” facing not only low graduation rates but also insufficient market participation.
Graduation rate of 8.3% on Solana launch day, weak market engagement
On January 25, Virtuals Protocol announced its expansion into the Solana ecosystem and unveiled several new initiatives, including launching trading on Meteora, establishing a Strategic SOL Reserve (SSR), converting 1% of transaction fees into SOL for ecosystem incentives, and hosting a Virtuals AI hackathon in March with technical support from the Solana Foundation.
To help more intelligent agents from the Base ecosystem expand to Solana, despite the fact that liquidity pools on Uniswap are locked for ten years and non-transferable, co-founder Wee Kee proposed two solutions on January 26 to improve liquidity and user experience. On one hand, the team is exploring allowing interested teams to use 50% of cbbtc in their agent wallets as a source of liquidity to create additional pools on Solana. On the other hand, the team is researching cross-chain abstraction swaps, which would enable users to purchase agents on Base using SOL or buy agents on Solana using ETH.
Virtuals Protocol’s expansion plan for Solana has sparked market speculation. In response, EtherMage, a core contributor at Virtuals Protocol, stated that going multi-chain is crucial to realizing Virtuals Protocol’s vision. Solana is just the first step—Virtuals Protocol plans to expand to several other blockchains and has allocated dedicated resources to collaborate with blockchain leaders and foundations to ensure projects built within these ecosystems receive funding support.
However, despite taking its first step toward multi-chain expansion, market performance has fallen short of expectations. In the early hours of February 12, Virtuals Protocol officially launched on Solana and revealed several details: all prototype agent tokens on Solana will retain the same contract address when transitioning to Sentient; once an agent accumulates a bonding curve of 42,000 VIRTUAL tokens, it graduates and creates a liquidity pool on Solana’s liquidity platform Meteora (founded by the same team as Jupiter); 1% of Sentient transaction fees are allocated to Virtuals Protocol and manually distributed in a 30%-20%-50% ratio to agent creators, agent partners, and agent sub-DAOs until an automated distribution mechanism is implemented.
According to the official website, since early this morning, only 156 AI Agent tokens have been created on Virtuals Protocol on Solana, with a graduation rate of 8.3% (13 agents). Market performance for graduated projects on Solana has also been disappointing—only five projects have market caps exceeding $1 million, with the highest-valued agent project, Nyx, reaching approximately $13 million. Moreover, overall, most projects exhibit a pattern of high opening prices followed by steep declines, with about half nearing zero in value. In terms of holder activity, aside from cucumber tester—which has over 2,600 holders despite its price halving—most projects have relatively few holders, typically numbering in the hundreds or even tens. Data indicates that the market response to Virtuals Protocol’s move into Solana has been lukewarm.
To drive growth in the Solana ecosystem and enhance network appeal, EtherMage recently disclosed, “We’ve received many requests from teams wanting to use buyback funds to simultaneously establish cross-chain TVL on Solana.” To support this, Virtuals Protocol will adjust its buyback and burn program for Base-based agent projects, aiming to assist over 100 agent projects with more than $10,000 in TVL to establish cross-chain TVL.
Facing cyclical fluctuations in business operations, still holds top market share
As the broader AI Agent sector undergoes a deep correction recently, projects including Virtuals Protocol are encountering market challenges stemming from cyclical fluctuations.
Dune data shows that as of February 12, Virtuals Protocol has successfully launched over 17,000 agents, generating nearly $6.74 billion in DEX trading volume and accumulating over $37.766 million in revenue (on Base network only).
Nevertheless, multiple metrics for Virtuals Protocol show signs of slowing growth or even significant decline. Dune data reveals that since late January, the daily number of newly created agents has dropped sharply, mostly remaining in double digits—far below the peak of over 1,300 recorded at the end of November last year. Revenue during this period has also declined noticeably, with daily income mostly ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, down from a high of over $1.58 million earlier this year. Trading volume for AI Agents on DEXs has similarly dropped significantly—from daily highs of hundreds of millions of dollars at the start of the year to the current level of tens of millions.
Similarly, the price of Virtuals Protocol’s token VIRTUAL has seen a sharp correction. According to CoinGecko, VIRTUAL’s price has dropped 46.3% over the past month. This downward trend closely correlates with the overall cooling of the AI Agent sector. Data from Cookie.fun shows that the total market cap of the AI Agent market has shrunk by nearly 65.3% from its peak over the past month.
Despite this, Virtuals Protocol continues to lead the AI Agent market. Data from Cookie.fun shows that Virtuals Protocol’s ecosystem market cap stands at $1.77 billion, ranking first in the market and capturing 24.8% of total market share. However, due to Virtuals Protocol’s short presence on Solana, the AI Agent market on Solana remains dominated by ai16z, which holds nearly 19.2% market share.
Thus, amid a significant drop in AI Agent market热度, Virtuals Protocol still faces considerable challenges in regaining growth momentum through its multi-chain expansion strategy.
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