January 17, 2025
Raise your targets, Crypto AI exceeds all and the Fat Protocol Thesis is Reborn.
GM
The year is 2026.
Every tweet on X or post on Instagram is met with a flood of AI agents spamming replies, fighting for your attention. And most of them aren’t even funny.
We’re hitting a saturation point. AI agents on social media aren’t enough to take Crypto AI to the next level. The future demands more. AI agents need to be productive. They need to earn their keep. Because let’s face it: there’s no free lunch.
Every agent requires compute to survive, and that costs money. When judgment day comes, only the agents delivering real value will make it through the fire.
With that, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Here’s to an exciting year ahead—if the first few days are any indication, 2025 is going to be one for the books.
In this edition of our weekly AI Edge, we cover:
A picture is worth a thousand words — just look at the mindshare AI is commanding compared to every other sectors this week. 🤯
If you’ve been waiting for an “alt season” sign, this is it! The Crypto AI market cap surged to $49B, up 11.1% from last week. While we usually highlight the top 5, look at how many tokens have doubled in value this week.
It’s not every week you see 10x gains, but NOVA, MOSS, and SWARMS have pulled it off, going from tiny caps to small caps in just seven days. For context, SWARMS and MOSS traded at a humble $1M–$2M market cap last week.
Most of these tokens generate no revenue; this screams froth in the markets. So be cautious—crypto moves fast, and things can drop as quickly as they rise, especially when liquidity dries up.
That said, not everyone came out on top. VANA and SNS saw drawdowns of 19% and 8%, respectively. Still, the fact that only a few tokens experienced a drop of 5% or more underscores the incredible momentum currently.
The AI agent sector has been soaking up the spotlight. Hype is a fickle friend. Over the next few weeks, we might see the market shift focus back to fundamental plays—tokens with real utility and revenue potential.
Enjoy the ride my friends—but don’t forget your parachute.
Superoo7 surveyed over 70 AI agent builders, and while the sample size is small, the results are telling: 57.1% identified as beginners, underscoring how early we are in this space.
The trend continues, with 48.6% of builders favouring no-code tools and environments. This signals massive growth potential for no-code AI agent platforms, where the competition is just heating up.
On the blockchain front, EVM (mostly Base) still reigns supreme as the preferred stack, but Solana is quickly gaining momentum. The race for innovation is on, and it’s anyone’s game! 🚀
The 1st ever Solana AI Hackathon concluded with a whopping 400+ submissions! Our very own Josh dove in and found some cool projects he wanted to shout out.
Source: Neur
NEUR is an AI tool designed to be the intelligent copilot for Solana, offering data-driven insights on tokens and integrating with Solana protocols like Jupiter. Think of it as a ChatGPT for doing due diligence on new Solana tokens—much needed for us to stay sane, given how many new tokens launch daily. It costs 1 SOL to join the early access program. The project’s token trades at a ~$40M market cap.
Source: JailbreakMe
JailBreakMe is akin to FAI (Freysa AI) on Base, rewarding users for rigorously testing and jailbreaking AI models. A portion of each prize pool is used for JAIL token buybacks from the market. Fun fact: the top user has earned $90K just by participating—maybe it’s time to quit our jobs! 😅 JAIL is currently trading at ~$9M market cap.
We just finished submitting a piece of our developing tech to the @solana and @sendaifun hackathon
With the help of @Akasha_Rising we transform shopping with her agents integrating multiple store APIs.
Personalized offers, immersive 3D views, and seamless checkout. Smarter,… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Bloomverse. (@play_Bloomverse)
4:52 PM • Dec 23, 2024
Akasha protocol lets users create AI agents for game, business, and community interactions. Highlights include an immersive shopping experience with personalized offers in 3D digital worlds powered by partnerships with Amazon Shopping and Solana Labs. It is part of the Bloomverse ecosystem, which creates mini-games for brands. AKA is trading at a ~$29M market cap
0xJeff also talked about several hackathon projects he liked:
Submission for @solana AI Hackathon is Now Over
Here are the Top 12 Interesting Projects Participating ↓
(A few likely to be potential winners)
— 0xJeff (@Defi0xJeff)
2:07 PM • Dec 24, 2024
We’re just getting started. Here’s a quick glimpse of what you can expect from us at Chain of Thought in 2025:
Bon Voyage
2025 is going to be a really awesome year
www.chainofthought.xyz/p/bon-voyage
The Fat Protocol Thesis Reborn
1) The Fat Protocol Thesis Reborn
The market senses the immense potential for agents to be both better consumer interfaces and autonomous economic actors. As L1 blockspace had difficult-to-value, but infinite potential last cycle, so does agent infra this cycle.
Lets dig in: x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Synth (@0xSynthesis1)
8:47 PM • Dec 27, 2024
An overview of 10+ AI x Crypto frameworks
🔥 I analyzed 10+ AI x Crypto frameworks so you don't have to
After reviewing 100+ projects and spending months building with them, I created a tool to save you time.
Here's the Crypto x AI Recommendation Engine you've been asking for
🧵
— superoo7 (@jlwhoo7)
2:08 PM • Dec 27, 2024
Decentralized compute as a resurgent L1 trade?
8. Decentralized compute has a resurgence as the “L1 trade” for the decentralized AI stack with the launch of Blackwell, o3, and new breakthroughs in decentralized training.
Annualized provider earnings for these platforms eclipse $100M in aggregate (currently ~$25-30M).
— D (@EffortCapital)
2:20 AM • Dec 29, 2024
TEE + Web3: Do you know what you trust in?
Recently, I've seen various posts of AI agents using TEE.
But do you know what TEE actually is and how they work?
Do you know other web3 projects using TEE, aside from AI agents?
Today, I published a report about TEE + Web3 in various aspects. 🧵
1/10
— c4lvin | ChainLight (@SiwonHuh)
3:07 PM • Dec 27, 2024
ARTICLE: So, what’s the deal with TEE and AI agents?
x.com/i/article/1872…
— Vladyslav Nekriach (@VNekriach)
7:53 AM • Dec 27, 2024
EXO introduces private web search with local LLMs on your device
Introducing EXO Private Search
Privacy-preserving web search for local LLMs.
Augments local LLMs with realtime search using Linearly Homomorphic Encryption:
- Live data from X, crypto, Wikipedia (more coming)
- 100,000x less data transfer than client sync
- <2s round-trip time… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— EXO Labs (@exolabs)
2:57 AM • Jan 2, 2025
The winning AI agent platform will be the one with the most developer functionality.
The winning AI agent platform will be the one with the most developer functionality
Developer functionality -> More expressive, more versatile agents able to do more things
The best platforms have been the ones that maximize what people can build/do - this is true for software,… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Andrew Kang (@Rewkang)
4:26 PM • Jan 2, 2025
Meta proves the utility of memory layers (built into the model, compared to RAG which relies on an external knowledge base)
New research from Meta FAIR — Meta Memory Layers at Scale. This work takes memory layers beyond proof-of-concept, proving their utility at contemporary scale ➡️ go.fb.me/3lbt4m
— AI at Meta (@AIatMeta)
7:16 PM • Jan 2, 2025
That’s a wrap for this week! Got feedback, wild ideas, or something cool to share? Just hit reply—we read it all (yes, even the “AI is taking over the world” ones).
Cheers,
Teng Yan & Josh
This newsletter is intended solely for educational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. It is not an endorsement to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. Always conduct your own research and exercise caution when making investment choices.
