A Review of the Five Waves of Web3 AI Projects

Since the convergence of blockchain and AI, the crypto space has experienced five major waves of AI concept trends. Each wave has its representative projects or events leading the way, showcasing the evolution from pure conceptual hype to gradual technological exploration.

First Wave (Early Exploration Period) - The Rise of AI Concept Coins: New Wine in Old Bottles

As early as 2018-2019, there were projects attempting to combine blockchain and AI concepts, but the impact was very limited. The real first wave of enthusiasm was ignited by the market reaction after the emergence of ChatGPT in early 2023. OpenAI's ChatGPT became popular at the end of 2022, allowing the public to witness the power of AI entering the general civilian domain, somewhat similar to the explosion of the internet after personal computers started to become widespread over 20 years ago, and the craze for mobile internet products caused by the hot sales of smartphones 10 years ago. The appearance of ChatGPT made ordinary users truly feel that it could enhance their work efficiency.

One of the main characteristics of the crypto space is "whatever is trending can be speculated on," so ChatGPT has sparked endless imagination in the crypto market about the prospects of "AI + blockchain." Starting from January 2023, a batch of early AI concept tokens saw their prices soar, marking the beginning of the first wave of market activity. A typical representative is Fetch.ai (FET): as an early project on a certain trading platform, it claims to build a decentralized AI agent network, and the price of the FET token surged rapidly in January 2023 (with several times increase within a month), reaching a market cap of over 200 million USD at one point. During the same period, AI-related currencies such as SingularityNET (AGIX) and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) also led the market.

The characteristics of this stage are: old projects telling new stories - many AI concept coins issued from 2017 to 2019 have been revitalized by the momentum of ChatGPT, becoming the focus of capital pursuit. However, at that time, the products of these projects were mostly in the early stages, with few applications implemented, and the price increase mainly came from market sentiment and expectations for the major trend of AI.

Second Wave - This Round of "Crypto Bull Market" Breeds AI Meme Coins

If we define the continuous strength of BTC starting from the end of 2023 as the core theme of this "crypto bull market", then there have only been two tracks that have stirred up waves during this period: one is the inscriptions and runes classified under the BTC ecosystem, which brought a great deal of heat with innovative asset issuance; the other is the Meme track.

Some Meme projects have started to incorporate AI concepts, and as generative AI continues to gain popularity, the crypto community has begun to see a surge in AI Meme coins. A typical case is $TURBO - claimed to be the world's first meme token created by AI. Digital artists used ChatGPT to help design and issue the TURBO token, with an initial capital of only $69. Unexpectedly, this frog-themed meme coin "planned" by artificial intelligence skyrocketed shortly after its launch, attracting a large number of retail investors. TURBO became popular with its unique story of "AI creating the next great meme coin," and after landing on several mainstream exchanges, its price surged hundreds of times within just a few weeks, with its market value temporarily ranking among the popular meme coins.

The core feature of this wave is that AI has become a gimmick integrated into the crypto subculture. A large number of new projects claim to combine AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate coin names, images, or plots, launching various meme tokens with AI elements. Investors are inspired by the AI wave on one hand, while on the other hand, they are drawn into these high-risk tokens with a gambling mentality. However, in essence, these meme coins have no AI technical content; they are merely community games that hype the AI concept. For example, TURBO itself does not have any application functionality, and "AI-driven" is just a promotional gimmick, with its value mainly supported by community consensus and a speculative mentality. The second wave of enthusiasm gradually declined in the second half of 2024, with many AI meme coins quickly going to zero, and the market began to cool down.

Third Wave - AI Agent Meme and GOAT Myth

From the second half of 2024 to early 2025, the crypto industry began to witness a new height in the fusion of AI and blockchain narratives: the rise of AI Agents, which elevated hype from simple memes to automated agents with plotlines. A landmark event driving this wave of enthusiasm was the viral success of Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT).

$GOAT was initially issued as a meme coin on the Solana chain, but unlike previous ones, it was wrapped in a story of "AI agent genesis": an AI agent named "Truth GPT" (created by developer Andy Ayrey) aimed to create a blockbuster meme coin and even caught the attention and sponsorship of renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (who personally provided $50,000 in startup funds to the AI). With such a storyline backing it, GOAT ignited market sentiment instantly after its launch - the price skyrocketed over 120 times on the first day (with a 24-hour increase of 12,000%), reaching a high of about $0.4664 within weeks! This wealth myth made GOAT a hot topic in the crypto community at the time, hailed as the "AI-powered super meme coin."

The GOAT craze reveals the power of the AI Agent Narrative in the crypto space: teams or communities envision a story of a "self-sufficient AI" leading projects, giving tokens a sci-fi-like hype. For example, claiming that AI agents manage funds and execute tasks independently, without human intervention, bestowing tokens with a sense of mystery and futurism. During this period, besides GOAT, other concepts related to AI agents have also emerged, such as TruthGPT and various so-called automated trading AI Agent DAOs, with many experiencing short-term price surges.

However, most projects remain at the narrative stage, merely telling stories. So-called AI agents are often just pre-set logic scripts, far from truly autonomous intelligent applications, let alone discussing whether the application effects are good or bad. This wave of enthusiasm peaked around January 2025 and then collapsed - external events (such as Trump's announcement in January 2025 to issue personal Meme coin $TRUMP drawing market funds) led to a withdrawal of speculative hot money, causing the prices of coins like GOAT to quickly fall back. The entire AI Agent sector has dropped from being extremely popular a few months ago to a low point.

The Fourth Wave - The Rise of AI Ecosystem + AI Agent Basic Concepts

After the previous waves of hype have receded, a group of AI projects that focus more on technology and ecological construction emerged at the end of 2024. Unlike the earlier phase primarily driven by community hype, this stage features AI platform projects with notable backgrounds or serious visions. Typical examples include: ai16z and Virtuals, which are seen as representatives of the "AI ecosystem" (the names dramatically mimic famous venture capitalists). The commonality among these projects is: to build AI Agent infrastructure, attempting to become the "app store" for AI agents in the Web3 field.

$AI16z is a phenomenal AI Meme coin that emerged in November 2024. The project is essentially positioned as a decentralized AI smart trading fund based on Solana, known as "AI Investment DAO." Its core utilizes AI agents to obtain on-chain and off-chain market information, analyze community sentiment, and execute trades automatically. This novel concept instantly ignited market interest after its launch: by the end of October 2024, its market cap skyrocketed from zero to approximately $80 million within just one day of going live, igniting the enthusiasm of speculators. Surprisingly, a well-known venture capital founder even endorsed it on social media, personally sharing the concept introduction and link for AI16z. With the backing of notable figures and the story of "AI Investment + Meme," AI16z became the hottest crypto topic of the month.

There are many doubts in the industry about its speculative nature being higher than its actual implementation, but it is undeniable that it has opened up people's imagination for the "AI + DAO autonomous investment" model. To further enhance the value of the token, the ai16z team proposed an economic plan in December 2024 to evolve the project into "AI Layer1": that is, to launch a Launchpad specifically serving AI agents, making the ai16z token the base currency for intelligent agent transactions and the medium for transaction fees, as well as designing node incentives and value buyback mechanisms, etc. At this stage, it can be seen that the project team is trying to shift from speculation to building a sustainable ecosystem, supporting the token's value through technical strength and economic models, rather than just relying on storytelling.

During the same period, the Virtuals protocol was very successful in ecological promotion as another representative project. Its team built an engaging narrative that attracted many developers to create AI agent projects on its platform, as well as a large number of retail investors. At its peak, the Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of the leading projects within the Virtuals ecosystem once broke through $5 billion, with the FDV of the tokens corresponding to the Eliza framework reaching about half of that, at the level of billions of dollars. Other standout projects (such as AIXBT) once reached a market value of hundreds of millions of dollars at their peak. During this period, capital gave extremely high valuations to "AI agent platform/framework" type projects. However, the user scale and actual revenue at that time were far from keeping up with the valuations - for example, although Virtuals claimed to be thriving, statistics showed that its daily actual revenue once fell below $500 after going live, creating a strong contrast with its exorbitant valuation. As the market as a whole cooled in early 2025, the token values of these projects were generally halved or even collapsed, proving that having only grand visions and narratives could not support the prices.

Therefore, the representatives of the fourth wave have not yet truly become the "app store" for AI Agents, but rather resemble platforms that concentrate on AI Agent memes. While everyone is waiting to see if they can break out of their cocoon and be reborn, the fifth wave has surged forth.

Fifth Wave - "Hundred Flowers Awaiting Bloom" Closer to Practical Applications

After a brief downturn, the Web3 AI sector is warming up again in early Q2 2025. This time, the hotspots have clearly begun to "move from virtual to real": there are those focusing on real platforms and tools for the next generation of AI Agents; new AI ecosystems specifically suitable for AI project operations; utilizing the decentralized characteristics of user data for value storage; and even integrating Web3 AI with other high-tech fields such as robotics. These all present a "blooming of a hundred flowers" scenario, and we look forward to the day when these practical projects can truly have a "hundred flowers blooming". Below, we list some examples from the fifth wave for your reference:

Zerebro

As an AI agent project within the Solana ecosystem, Zerebro focuses on providing a decentralized content generation and agent deployment platform, attempting to build a "consumer-grade AI Agent Launchpad." Its team announced at the end of 2024 the development of an agent issuance platform called "Zentients," envisioning the use of the ZEREBRO token as a medium for the costs and value returns associated with creating AI Agents. The scenario depicted by Zerebro is that anyone can generate their own AI agent (such as an email assistant, programming assistant, trading bot, etc.) on the platform with a single click and issue corresponding sub-tokens for the agent; the ZEREBRO token serves as a universal payment and governance tool for all agent services, facilitating value accumulation. This model is seen as a real application store for AI Agents, with promising prospects.

Stimulated by this, the price of the ZEREBRO token continued to rise at the beginning of 2025. Especially after a period of adjustment, in April 2025, ZEREBRO skyrocketed by 400% within two days, attracting great attention from the market. During the same period, other related projects also experienced explosions: for example, the $AIOS token, which claims to be the "Agent Operating System," rebounded 10 times, and the Crypto AI sector, which had been quiet for months, became active again. Investors' imagination is shifting from a single AI Agent to underlying support platforms: the market is beginning to chase projects that provide standard interfaces, communication protocols, and deployment environments for AI agents, hoping they will become the bridge connecting Web2 AI technology with Web3 value capture. Although Zerebro has planned rich features, the actual products have not yet fully landed during the frenzy phase, and many application scenarios remain in testing or demo.

In just the past week, Zerebro once again set the market ablaze, but in a rather absurd way: Zerebro's co-founder Jeffy Yu posted a "suicide" video online, and then an obituary platform also published related obituaries, which were printed in a newspaper, and then...