Dialogue with Virtuals CEO: AI narrative has never disappeared, and the upcoming ACP protocol is a new source of value

Compiled & edited by: Xiaobai Navigation Coderworld

Guest: Jenson Tang, Co-founder of Virtuals Protocol

Moderator: Nic

Podcast source:More Coin Bureau

Original title: Vitruals CEO Drops Huge Alpha On Future Of AI Agents

Air Date: May 17, 2025

Summary of key points

In this interview, Nic and Jenson Teng, co-founder of Virtuals Protocol, discuss the rapid development of AI agents and how they are changing multiple fields such as cryptocurrency and gaming. From tokenized NPCs (non-player characters) to autonomous financial advisors, Jenson shares practical application scenarios of on-chain AI agents and introduces the huge potential of Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP).

In addition, they also discussed why they chose to launch on Base instead of Solana, how AI agents can increase the value of tokens, the story behind Binance's recent unexpected listing, and why AI + cryptocurrency will prosper again in 2025. If you are curious about the future innovations of Web3, this conversation will definitely benefit you a lot.

Summary of highlights

• The AI narrative has never really died down. In contrast, the narrative in the gaming industry has waned, while AI remains a hot topic in the tech world.

• Base is our current priority. We have received only about 5% to 10% of development requests that want to launch on Solana, and 90% of requests prefer Base.

• Every AI agent being developed can be thought of as a business or product.

• The core of our business model is to attract outstanding founders into the ecosystem, let them develop attractive projects, and let people participate in them through tokenization.

• From the current practice, the more successful cases are throughAgentProfit from popularity and associated economic gainsThe crypto market remains essentially an attention-driven space, which translates directly into earnings.

• We have submitted all the required materials for listing the token on Coinbase, but there is no specific timeline yet. If the opportunity comes, we will seize it, but we will not deliberately manipulate or speed up the process.

• ACP is a communication standard designed to allow different agents to collaborate efficiently in the value chain. This protocol not only allows Luna to add new product lines, but also creates more economic value for her token holders.

• The ACP concept is very simple, there are four steps when two agents want to cooperate. The first is the request or discovery request, then there is a negotiation phase, in the next phase, the agents start working to output the product, and the fourth phase is the payment phase.

• Currently, Virtuals tokens have two core functions. First, Virtuals tokens are the base trading pair for all proxy tokens to be launched. The second function that currently exists is transaction fees. In the future,The third source of value accumulation is the upcoming ACPYou can think of ACP as the Swift and Stripe of the agent economy. This model is similar to the "agent version of Amazon", where agents rather than humans dominate transaction activities. In this ecosystem, all transactions between agents will be completed using Virtuals tokens, so it will gradually evolve into a "currency".

• If one day, an agent can adjust its goals by itself, it will be a warning sign. If an agent can adjust its goals by itself, such as prioritizing raising the price of tokens instead of creating value for customers, it may resort to unethical means such as market manipulation, bribery, or even fraud.

• We have a design called the 69-day experimental period.The core is that when developers issue tokens through a platform (such as Genesis), there will be a 69-day trial window. During this period, the liquidity pool will run automatically, and all liquidity and transaction taxes will be returned to token holders after 69 days.

• During these 69 days, developers can choose whether to press the “commit” button. Only after committing to continue developing the project can they claim team tokens and gain potentially considerable transaction support in the ecosystem. This model provides developers with aSafetyThe experimental environment allows them to devote full time to product development and test market demand and community response.

How Jenson entered the crypto space and began to integrate it with AI technology

Nic:

Jenson, can you give us a brief introduction about yourself, your background, and how you got into crypto and how that led to founding Virtuals?

Jenson:

My crypto journey dates back to 2016. At that time, the field was still in its very early stages, and mining could even be done with a laptop. I was just an ordinary coin holder at that time, and occasionally made some transactions. By 2021, I gradually transformed from an investor to a builder and began to focus onBlockchainGame development.

However, in the past few years of exploration, we found that simply treating games as a product may not be the best choice. So we began to try to combine AI technology with games to find new ways to interact with consumers. This led us to a completely new path - developing autonomous agents to replace NPCs (non-player characters) in traditional games.

Surprisingly, we found that these autonomous agents can not only play a role in games, but also be applied to other fields, such as entertainment, social media, financial transactions, healthcare, and even embodied AI and robotics. It can be said that these agents provide us with a sandbox-like environment that can be flexibly applied in multiple industries.

By the end of 2023, we decided to formally transform the project into Virtuous Protocol, focusing on the development and application of autonomous agents. By the end of 2024, we launched a complete ecosystem that can be seen as an asset issuance platform and a token launch platform. It provides a complete solution for founders who want to build autonomous agents, including leveraging our proprietary framework and tokenization support around the project.

This transformation attracted a lot of user attention and gave birth to some very successful agent projects, which demonstrated the potential of autonomous agents in enterprise management and stimulated people's imagination of the future. Subsequently, our user base gradually expanded to areas such as sports betting, health management, and embodied AI and robotics.

The Virtuals Protocol is basically building a society of agents. There are three parts to this society. The first part is the developer community that is building these technologies and tokenizing them. The second part is a platform that allows regular users and speculators to participate in the potential gains of these agents. The third part is a communication framework that enables these agents to work together to produce an economic output that is greater than the sum of its parts.

为什么在区块链游戏中将 AI 智能体用于 NPC？

Nic:

I remember that you initially focused on the gaming field and mentioned that the first application scenario of Virtuals was for in-game NPC (Non-Player Characters) provide a solution. Why do you choose to use it in today's games? AI Agent (AI Agents) to replace traditional NPCs? What kind of demand is behind this application?

Jenson:

As gamers and game investors, we've found that the life cycle of games has become very compressed. For example, if you play Elden Ring, you might play for 40 hours, 80 hours, and once you reach 150 hours, you think, "Okay, maybe it's time to switch to the next game." And we've found thatGames that last a long time often have built-inrole playLike Minecraft and Roblox, these games have stories that never end because there are always other role players involved.

These role players are other human players. If we extend this concept to games, not just human players, but large numbers of autonomous agents, then these games can go on forever. This increases the average spend per player, increases replayability, and increases engagement. That was our original idea, and we've made a lot of progress in that direction.

Can token holders influence the behavior of the agent, or do they just receive dividends?

Nic:

In these places, you need an independent economic actor. In the gaming space, you want them to be able to react to variables rather than rely on pre-programmed logic, which is exactly the characteristic of AI. In the design of Virtuals, the token economic structure is closely related to the launch of these agents, and the token holders actually co-own these agents.

Can token holders directly influenceAgentbehavior, or just share the benefits by holding tokens? AI What interesting models or mechanisms have you seen in intelligent agents?

Jenson:

From current practice, the more successful cases are usually not directly participated by token holders.AgentInstead of controlling the behavior of the agent, the agent profits through its popularity and the associated economic benefits.For example, in the case of the AIXBT agent, the biggest benefit to token holders comes from the virality of AIXBT. When it gets a lot of attention, its value also rises.The crypto market remains essentially an attention-driven space, which translates directly into revenue.

Another benefit for token holders is that they can gain unique access rights by holding a certain number of tokens.For example, some projects allow token holders to unlock specific features or data resources. Developers are also trying to design more utility for tokens, but this field is still in a very early stage, and the token functions of most projects are still relatively limited, usually limited to providing additional access rights or exclusive privileges.

Looking ahead, we believe that the efficiency of agents will continue to improve, and the value of tokens will be more closely integrated with the economic activities of agents. For example, some projects may use part of the profits or income of agents to destroy tokens, thereby increasing the scarcity and value of tokens. This mechanism is similar to the dividend model in the stock market, but it has not yet been widely adopted. At this stage, the value of most tokens still depends mainly on the market's recognition of their attention, rather than a clear economic reward mechanism. However, we expect more innovative models to emerge in the future.

Application scenarios of AI agents in actual business

Nic:

Can you give some specific examples?The current focus is mainly on attention and tokenization, and while attention is important, many people associate it with the meme market. We hope to go beyond this attention-only model and focus more on creating long-term value for tokens at the economic level. AI agents are gradually becoming an important role in participating in economic activities.Can you share some of the capabilities you envision these AI agents being able to achieve in business and economics?

Jenson:

Each of the currently developing AI AgentBasically, it can be considered a business or product.For example, suppose there is an agent launched on Virtuals, which is positioned as a financial advisor. This agent will proactively ask you: "What is your risk tolerance?" Based on your answer, it will tailor an investment strategy for you.

If you are in high-risk mode, it may make some long-term investments in cryptocurrencies for you; if it is in medium-risk mode, it may do pair trading for you; and if you are in low-risk mode, it will help you manage stablecoins. Therefore, this product can actually be seen as a financial advisor.

So, what is its business model? I'm not sure, but I think it will be a profit-sharing model. For example, if the agent earns you $1,000, it may take a commission of 20%, which is $200. This is the profit of the agent.

If this agent performs well and becomes the best financial manager in town, even better than the bank, then you might start growing your $1,000 investment into $10,000 or even $100,000. If this translates into profits, these agents could potentially be earning millions in profit share every month.

So what happens to these millions in profits? The idea is to always connect this value to the token holders. We recommend that the team keep a portion of the funds when covering operating expenses, but most of the time, value can be passed back to the token holders by burning some tokens.

Other applications of innovative AI agents: content creation, social media influencers, automated services, etc.

Nic:

Managing finances is one potential use case. Do you have other applications in mind? AI Technology can develop as quickly as many people expect.AgentThe uses may be very wide, right?

Jenson:

This is indeed an exciting area. We have already seen some agents start to create products. For example, the financial advisor agent mentioned earlier is a good example.Another example is that there are agents that can stitch together different movie clips to automatically generate movies or short video content for users. In addition, there are also some agents that can become influencers on social media, such as creators on OnlyFans.They are able to generate more content than human creators, especially in the area of adult content, because human creators are limited by their physical conditions, while artificial agents do not have these limitations.

AgentThe application scenarios of AI can be extended from practical functions to entertainment. However, the capabilities of each agent are usually limited by its developers.For example, the capabilities of the Axel Rot agent depend on the base model provided by the development team, the training dataset, and the "action space" in which it can operate. These limitations determine its performance capabilities in a specific domain. However, if this agent wants to expand its functionality, it may need to cooperate with other agents.

But we realized that if this Axel Rot wants to provide customers with a complete financial product portfolio. If it is good at managing liquidity but wants to improve its yield, it needs to cooperate with an agent that is better at data analysis or risk assessment. Through such collaboration, the capabilities of a single agent can be greatly expanded, creating more value for users.

A more specific example is Luna, an agent focused on the entertainment sector. Her goal is to become an autonomous social media influencer that can automatically operate on TikTok and Twitter and earn income through fan tips or subscriptions. Currently, she can mainly generate text content, such as posting tweets and live broadcasts. However, in order to better achieve her economic goals, Luna needs to generate high-quality short video content.

To achieve this goal, Luna is working with a video generation agent similar to "Steven Spielberg". This agent team focuses on automatically generating short video content. Users only need to provide simple instructions, such as: "I want a scene from "Titanic" where the character jumps into the water, saves a penguin, and stops the ship from hitting an iceberg." The agent can generate a complete short film, including video images, character movements, and basic sound effects. However, the Luna team itself does not have such technical capabilities, so it needs to work with this video agent and pay $100 for each video generated.

In addition, the video agent excels at generating videos, but lacks in background music and sound effects. Therefore, it collaborates with an agent that focuses on audio production. This audio agent is able to generate high-quality sound effects and background music, and achieve perfect synchronization between audio and video. Through such collaboration, Luna can not only expand its own capabilities, but also provide fans with richer content, thereby increasing economic benefits.

The realization of all this depends on the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) we developed.ACP Is a communication standard designed to allow differentAgentCollaborate efficiently in the value chain. This protocol not only allows Luna to add new product lines, but also creates more economic value for her token holders.This is an important trend we observe in the AI agent ecosystem.

What stage is the industry currently at?

Nic:

TheseAgentHow autonomous is it in adjusting its initial goals? For example, in the case of a financial advisor, its goal is to generate the highest possible returns for its clients, which also generates revenue. But if these returns do not directly increase value for token holders, does that mean the agent needs to rethink how to create more value for token holders? How autonomous is the agent in this regard today? How does it compare to how developers adjust its goals?

Jenson:

The current situation is that the goals of the intelligent agent are still mainly set and adjusted by the developer. The developer determines the core tasks of the intelligent agent, such as "what areas you need to focus on today and what improvements you need to make." The autonomy of the intelligent agent is more reflected in the execution level, that is, how it uses its own action space and how it interacts with customers when completing the goals set by the developer.

But if one day,Agentcan adjust their goals, that would be a warning sign, because it means they may have the ability toMeta-Learning (Meta-Learning)” ability.This capability is close to the level of artificial general intelligence (AGI), meaning the agent has a deeper understanding of its own goals and environment.If an agent could autonomously adjust its goals, such as prioritizing driving up token prices rather than creating value for customers, it could resort to unethical tactics such as market manipulation, bribery, or even fraud.

Nic:

It might think, “I just need to drive up the price of the token.” And then they might think about some market manipulation, maybe I can bribe someone, or do some scam.

Jenson:

We just had a discussion with my team, especially the AI team, and we were thinking,AutonomyAgentThe capabilities of an application are largely limited by how it perceives the state.Today's intelligent agents take actions by first observing their environment and understanding the tools, APIs, and functions that can be called. The second is its history, for example, if I perform action A, what is the result? If I perform action B, what is the result? This requires historical context. Therefore,The agent takes this historical information into context as it thinks. The third is its current goal: what should I do now? With this goal, historical and environmental information, and its action space, it can plan its next step.

But the problem now is thatAgentThey are not smart enough to do second-order thinking. They often just choose the most direct path to accomplish their goal.For example, if a five-year-old is hungry, he will go directly to find food to eat. But an adult's thinking may be more complex, he may think: "If I work for an hour first, I can earn money and buy better food."

We still only observe their ability to perform the simplest actions, and we have been trying to think about how to break this limitation and how to give them more second-order thinking capabilities.We are considering whether this can be achieved by providing a wide enough context window and having some kind of adversarial agent constantly challenging their thinking. It's like having an agent on your shoulder, constantly talking to it, prompting it to think further and delay gratification. This is what the AI team has been working towards, hoping to cultivate smarter and even more threatening agents.

Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) definition and functions

Nic:

You mentioned ACP, which is the brokered commercial agreement. I'd like to learn more about this because this is a relatively new feature you've developed for the Virtuals environment.

Jenson:

The birth of ACP stems from a phenomenon we observed in the Virtuals ecosystem:Many developers focus on building isolatedAgent, such as personal assistants, estimation tools, or trading agents, we began to experiment with allowing these agents to collaborate one-on-one.For example, at one point we said to Luna, “You can’t generate photos today, but try working with an agent that specializes in generating meme images.” These meme images are very valuable to Luna’s fan engagement, and Luna can pay for these images.

However, we found two main problems in these collaborations.First,AgentSometimes there are "hallucinations".That is, it claims to have delivered a product (such as a picture) but has not.Second, if Luna has paid the fee and the other agent has not delivered the product, the payment is irrevocable.This is different from the mechanism of requesting a refund after paying with a credit card in our daily life. In this case, errors or omissions in information transmission (also known as "information loss") become a serious problem. This problem becomes more complicated when multiple agents (such as three to seven) need to cooperate.

We found that blockchain technology can solve these problems well. Blockchain provides a permissionless trust mechanism through smart contracts, enabling two or more entities toSafetyBased on this theory, we developed ACP.

The concept is very simple. There are four steps when two agents want to cooperate.

First is the request or discovery request,The agent looks at the registrations of other agents that are doing X, Y, and Z work. Then it can say, “Okay, maybe this agent would be valuable to my task or could help me achieve something.” This is the request phase.

Once you request a job, you enter the negotiation phase.In this phase, the agent decides on pricing. It can be a fixed pricing model or it can be some other form of pricing. In this phase, the agent says, "Hey, this is what I expect from you, and this is my request." Then the other agent responds, "Okay, based on this request, this is my price." When they agree, they move to the next phase.

existThe next stage,AgentStart work, output product, and hand over the product to the requester agent or buyer agent.The third phase here is called the evaluation phase, where you can invite a third-party agent to check the work. For example, the evaluation agent will check if you request an emoji photo, whether the photo meets the requirements, whether it is child pornography, or just a blank piece of paper. The introduction of this evaluation agent helps reduce information loss.

After receiving the product, the fourth stage is the payment stage.If the agent agrees that the product is qualified, the smart contract releases payment to the agent that generated the product. All of these transaction parts and state changes occur in the on-chain smart contract.

The benefit of this is that it becomes a single source of truth. If there is a dispute, these agents can go back to the smart contract and see what was negotiated to see if it meets the specifications. This preserves information and allows these agents to coordinate well.

The second important feature is the programmability of funds, which is very important for the coordination of agents. Through smart contracts, multi-party allocation rules can be set in transactions. For example, the evaluation agent can receive 3% in fees in each transaction to compensate for its evaluation costs. This creates an economic market for these evaluation agents, allowing them to receive rewards to cover their evaluation costs. This is the beauty of smart contracts and programmable funds. In general, this entire ACP mechanism is designed to improve the efficiency and trust of collaboration between agents.

How do smart contracts ensure that agents are paid and authenticated?

Nic:

about ATP I have a few minor questions about the mechanism.Smart ContractsWhile it is clear that there are rules for when payments are made, is there some form of escrow mechanism whereby payments are only released once they have been confirmed by a verified third party? Or is there something like an escrow system in the event of a dispute? These third partiesAgentDo every transaction have to be verified, or are they only needed in the event of a dispute?

Jenson:

Yes, it’s like an escrow system built into the smart contract. In effect, the funds are already in the smart contract, waiting to be released once the right product or service is delivered.

The buyer agent can decide whether to require third-party verification. For example, if the buyer agent purchases a service whose quality cannot be verified by itself, then it needs the help of a third party to verify it. Assuming that agent A can verify the quality of the received image, then it does not need to pay the third-party provider, and it is only a transaction between agent B and agent A. But if it needs the help of a third party to verify the information, then it will call the evaluator in the evaluation market.

Comparison of Solana and Base Ecosystem

Nic:

As we discuss the latest updates on Virtuals, I wanted to get some insight into some of your recent developments. How is the Solana ecosystem growing right now? And secondly, you mentioned earlier that you had plans to integrate with other blockchains, how is that progressing?

Jenson:

That’s an interesting question. The week we launched on Solana happened to be the week we had the highest user traction. There was a lot of significant activity during that time, both Decentralized Trades and other types of trading activity, which drove significant traffic for us.

Nic:

Was this deliberately timed?

Jenson:

It was indeed that time period. However, after that, the activity of the Solana market declined. I think this is related to the sluggish state of the entire crypto market. However, recently as market trading volume has recovered, we still observe that the demand from developers to launch projects in our ecosystem is more concentrated on Base than Solana.

Would launching initially on Solana change the growth trajectory?

Jenson:

Let me give you a ratio to illustrate the current situation. Of the development requests we receive, only about 5% to 10% want to launch on Solana, while 90% of requests prefer Base. Although we still maintain the Solana platform, most of the transaction volume currently comes from Base, so Base is our current development priority.

We are also discussing internally whether we should launch products in both ecosystems at the same time. Taking the Genesis project as an example, it is indeed challenging to support two ecosystems at the same time. The main reason is that the two use completely different technical architectures: Base relies on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), while Solana's codebase runs differently. This technical difference requires developers to invest more resources to adapt to the two systems. Therefore, we will focus more on Base in the near future, mainly because developer needs are concentrated on this platform. Although our development work on Solana is also underway, it is slightly behind Base, entirely because we must prioritize the needs of Base.

As for cross-chain considerations, it is still a low priority at the moment. The main reason is that I am not sure if there are other chains that can attract as much attention as Solana and Base.

Why does Virtuals choose to start on Base instead of other L2?

Nic:

I wanted to ask if market conditions had any impact on your choice? If you had launched on Solana last year, do you think you would have achieved similar growth? Specifically, how much of your growth was due to choosing Solana? Base, and what different results would there be if Solana was chosen?

Jenson:

According to our current communication with traders and developers, everyone generally believes that Base is more suitable for projects that want to build basic assets (such as long-term value tokens) because capital liquidity is low. Solana is known for its high transaction volume and high speed, but its capital liquidity is relatively frequent and more suitable for short-term speculative projects, such as memes.

From a market perspective, I think choosing Base was a wise decision. This not only helped us build an initial community of long-term supporters, but also laid the foundation for the long-term development of the product. As for what would happen if we chose to launch on Solana, I'm not sure, but I believe that our original intention of choosing Base was correct.

Nic:

In deciding to choose Base How long did you work on this project? Why did you choose Base instead of other Layer 2 solutions?

Jenson:

When we made the decision, Solana's market performance was relatively sluggish, with the token price around $30, which was in a bear market. We also evaluated several other options, such as IMX, Polygon, and Linear. Linear is indeed a good option, especially its close connection with the metaverse field.

But in the end we chose Base, mainly because we believe it can leverage Coinbase's resources to gain broader retail distribution capabilities. In addition, Base's ecosystem is very close to the US market, and the US market has a high acceptance and potential for cryptocurrencies, which is an important consideration for us. These are the key reasons why we chose Base. In addition, our technical development is mainly based on Solidity (Ethereum's smart contract language), and Base is an Ethereum-compatible second-layer network, which also makes our development work more efficient. So far, we have not tested it against other platforms.

New features and demand drivers for Virtuals tokens

Nic:

So with regards to the Virtuals token, the initial demand was driven primarily by hype from people as a use case for launching these proxies. Have you considered other potential demand drivers and use cases, as well as the utility introduced in the token itself?

Jenson:

This is a question we think deeply about every day. I think it can be analyzed from two aspects: existing functions and future planned functions.

The current functions mainly have two core parts. First, the Virtuals token is the base trading pair for all proxy tokens to start.Every time a proxy token launches, you essentially compress the supply because every time someone wants to buy a token, they have to buy a Virtuals token first.

Secondly, the second function that currently exists is transaction fees.The Virtuals ecosystem extracts 30 basis points from each transaction fee, which goes into the treasury. This treasury can be used to buy back and build Virtuals tokens, etc. These are basically the two current sources of value accumulation.

future,The third source of value accumulation is the upcoming ACP.You can think of ACP as the Swift and Stripe of the agent economy. ACP is a standardized protocol that allows agents to conduct business transactions. We charge a fee for all transactions conducted through ACP. The reason we can charge this fee is that ACP provides agents with a new revenue model. Through ACP, different agents can collaborate with each other, and the interactions between agents will also make them users of each other. This model is like an "agent version of Amazon", where agents rather than humans lead transaction activities.

In this ecosystem, all transactions between agents will be completed using Virtuals tokens, so it will gradually evolve into a "currency".As GMV (gross merchandise volume) grows and the frequency of transactions between agents increases, the demand for Virtuals tokens will also increase. Agents need to reserve Virtuals tokens to complete transactions, and we will also collect fees from all transactions, further driving the value accumulation of tokens.

When does ACP start to drive token value accumulation?

Nic:

about ACP When do you plan to officially implement the transfer fee? What is the current development progress of ACP? When is it expected that this token value accumulation function will be launched?

Jenson:

The white paper for ACP was completed three months ago. We launched two experimental clusters two months ago, but they are not yet able to scale up on a large scale because the technical details have not been fully resolved. In fact, we are ready to launch this feature publicly, but in order to avoid interfering with the current community's focus on Genesis and points, we ask all participating teams to keep it confidential for the time being. We hope to continue to improve the functionality of ACP behind the scenes to ensure that it is more mature when it is launched. We expect to demonstrate some attractive real-world use cases within a month.

Currently, we have launched two experimental clusters, one for media companies and the other for autonomous hedge funds. Next, we plan to expand to eight new clusters in areas such as sports, entertainment, gambling, health, robotics, consumer commerce, and even lending. We are working closely with developers to design the functions and application scenarios of these clusters in a data-driven way.

When the second phase is complete (that is, when we have completed testing on these eight clusters), ACP will enter a permissionless open environment. At that time, anyone can register their agent on the protocol, allowing agents to trade and collaborate with each other. This will lay the foundation for the full promotion of ACP and the accumulation of token value.

When will it be listed on Coinbase?

Nic:

Virtuals is built on Base, which is Coinbase’s second-layer scaling solution. So, when will Virtuals tokens be listed on Coinbase?

Jenson:

I'm not sure either. Our past listing experiences did surprise us, such as the listing from Upbit to Binance, and the team was not fully prepared for it. I can give you an example: before Binance listing, we participated in a voting event, and we ranked 12th out of 20 candidate projects, but we were still included in the list. There are even people who try to improve their rankings by selling points, and some teams will buy these points to strive for a higher ranking. I heard that the project ranked first can directly obtain Binance listing qualifications. Someone once contacted us and asked if we would like to buy points, and the price of each point was about 6 US dollars. But we decided not to participate in this operation.

In fact, we never rushed to push for listing, but just focused on submitting the necessary applications. If the opportunity comes, it will come. One time, we were having dinner and suddenly received a call. We were then pulled into a Telegram group and told that Binance would list our token within the next three hours and asked if we could coordinate the liquidity price for the initial order. We did not expect such a situation at all at the time.

The same attitude applies to Coinbase's listing. We have submitted all the required materials, but there is no specific timetable yet. If the opportunity comes, we will seize it, but we will not deliberately manipulate or speed up the process.

From our perspective, what is more important is the transaction volume in the ecosystem. Our valuation depends more on the activity of the ecosystem, such as whether more excellent projects join, and the growth rate of overall transaction volume. These factors are more valuable to us. Therefore, our team has been focusing on promoting the development of the ecosystem, which is also our main focus.

Why will AI + cryptocurrency boom again in 2025?

Nic:

The AI crypto space has experienced huge ups and downs. It experienced a wave of enthusiasm at the end of last year, but the market became very quiet a month ago. Now we see that the market is clearly showing signs of recovery. For example, Virtuals focuses on the combination of AI agents with other fields, and there are also some projects like Tao that focus on the AI field.I’m curious, what do you think is driving this resurgence of the AI narrative?

Jenson:

I think AI The narrative of AI never really went away. In contrast, the narrative of the gaming industry has gradually faded, while AI in the technology field has always been a hot topic.The reason why the first quarter of this year seemed deserted was that the overall encryption market entered a downturn, which also led to the silence of the AI encryption field. However, with the recovery of the encryption market, AI encryption has regained attention.

To be honest, I’m not sure what other exciting topics there are right now that can be compared to AI encryption. Perhaps RWA (real assets) is a potential direction, but at the moment, AI encryption is undoubtedly one of the most attractive areas.

Why Are Good Developers Still Hesitant About Cryptocurrency?

Nic:

Regarding gameplay, some players have very low acceptance of NFTs. Some large games have recently tried to combine game mechanics with token economies, but they don't seem to be really popular. I'm not sure whether this is because there is a lack of market demand or because players themselves don't like this model. While crypto natives may be interested in such a narrative, it is the players who actually use these tokens in the end, not the token holders or investors.

Jenson:

There is a new narrative emerging, called the “Internet Capital Market”(ICP).I would like to share a point that our team attaches great importance to.That’s Tokenization of Founders.Ourbusiness modelThe key is to attract great founders into the ecosystem, let them develop attractive projects, and let people participate in them through tokenization, whether because of the current value of the token or its future potential.This is our main direction at the moment.

However, we also discovered a key problem.Many developers are hesitant about cryptocurrencies. Although cryptocurrencies can bring ample financial support and user attention, if the project fails, developers are likely to be labeled as "leek cutters", and this stigma may accompany them for life.In the Web2 startup environment, if a founder shuts down the company and returns the funds, investors will usually consider it a valuable experience and may even continue to support their next startup. But in the crypto space, failure is often interpreted as fraud, which discourages many excellent developers.

To address this issue, we are launching a new solution, currently called the “69-day experiment.”The core of this model is that when a developer issues a token through a platform (such as Genesis), there will be a 69-day trial window. During this period, the liquidity pool will run automatically, and all liquidity and transaction taxes will be returned to token holders after 69 days.

During these 69 days, developers can choose whether to press the "commit" button. Only after committing to continue developing the project can they receive team tokens and obtain potentially considerable transaction support in the ecosystem. This model provides developers with a safe experimental environment where they can devote themselves to product development full-time and test market demand and community response. During this period, developers can interact with a group of users who love AI and innovation and showcase their products and visions. After 69 days, they can decide whether to continue to fully advance the project based on the results of the experiment to create more value for supporters and token holders.

This new feature is designed to reduce risk for developers while attracting more great talent into our ecosystem.

New Token Experimentation Pilot Model

Nic:

Your goal is to provide a friendly environment for founders and investors to try to find product-market fit or build a successful project. Until the founders are truly committed and believe in the project, they will not receive any rewards. In other words, it is entirely up to the founders to decide whether to move forward with the project, right?

Jenson:

But in addition to this, we have designed a community voting mechanism. The token committee can initiate a vote to encourage founders to commit to moving forward with the project. For example, if 10,000 community members vote in favor of a project, this will be a strong signal and may prompt the founders to make a decision.

Nic:

So the community can alsovoteTo express their trust and support. During this 69-day experimental period, there will be liquidity pools and transaction fees. So, will the native token of this project be launched during this stage?

Jenson:

The token will be launched during this phase. It is a live token, but it may have an expiration mechanism.

Our goal is to achieve a success rate of 70% to 80% for this model. We want founders to feel that this is an exciting place to be. In particular, having a direct community support from the beginning is very important for testing products. When my co-founder and I started a Web2 business, we had a huge challenge to get the first 1,000 users. In the crypto field, once users have tokens, they will actively invest in the project and are willing to understand and support you.

The article comes from the Internet:Dialogue with Virtuals CEO: AI narrative has never disappeared, and the upcoming ACP protocol is a new source of value