AI Agent Battle Report: Current Situation in Q1/2025

Original author: Defi0xJeff

Original translation: Luke. Mars Finance

The past 2.5 months have been exceptionally difficult for anyone in this field. We have experienced events within and outside the cryptocurrency space that have negatively impacted the market in ways previously unimaginable - Trump family tokens, $LIBRA, market manipulation (through strategic reserve announcements), tariff policies, etc.

AI agent tokens and meme coin trading activities have cooled down, causing major participants to struggle with trading volume, income, and price trends.

Virtuals

@virtuals_io still maintains the No.1 ecosystem with the largest community of builders and investors, but activities have declined—daily trading volume has dropped from over $100 million to $5 million to $10 million, and daily fees have decreased from $500,000 to $1 million per day to $50,000.

Due to the continuous exchange of $VIRTUAL earned from the 1% fee into cbBTC, further selling of $VIRTUAL was prompted, leading to community members such as @Degen__Ape__ coming forward to propose a reform plan:

Builders in the CT Virtuals are not optimistic, more and more teams are demanding better communication and support for existing builders.

Nevertheless, Virtuals is making progress on its Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) program, with its latest article detailing the three parts of the ACP:

Index Registry ➞ The ‘passport’ of the agent, detailing the name, capabilities, and service fees.

Business Interaction ➞ Negotiation and evaluation layer for services.

Currency trading ➞ A transparent, verifiable, and tamper-proof smart contract layer. Virtuals is moving towards its vision of ‘Virtuals Nation’ and plans to launch two proxy businesses in the next two months:

Hedge Fund ➞ An agent assesses risks and conducts trading/return farming for users.

Independent media company ➞ Agently develop engaging stories, create viral videos, and efficiently promote projects.

Personally, I believe the primary challenge that needs to be addressed first (many of which are shared with Degen Ape) is that existing builders should be able to continue building without worrying about the liquidity of their tokens or lack of financial support.

For investors and builders, the current hope is that these challenges can be addressed, and ACP case studies can successfully push the boundaries of AI agents.

Here is more information about the ACP experimental plan:

Clanker

@clankeronbase and @bankrbot continue to disrupt every launch platform in this space by focusing on easy token launches, fair launch environments, and supporting creators’ liquidity and fee distribution mechanisms.

For more information, please see here:

ElizaOS

The rebranding of ai16z to ElizaOS marks the beginning of a new chapter in AI agent operating systems.

@shawmakesmagic focused on building Eliza v2 during the market downturn in the past two months.

Eliza has five major initiatives in progress:

Eliza v2 ➞ significantly improved AI model integration + multi-agent architecture, achieving seamless autonomous collaboration.

Global Trust Market ➞ AI-driven reputation scoring, transaction verification, and decentralized execution.

AI-driven token launch platform

DegenSpartanAI Trading Agent

Eliza Studio ➞ Art and creative experience. There has been discussion about whether Anthropic’s MCP and OpenAI’s Agents SDK will disrupt frameworks like Eliza. I think it’s unlikely, because Eliza represents a vibrant open-source AI developer community with more products/upcoming catalysts. More information about the vision of ElizaOS:

Arc

@arcdotfun released its light white paper a week ago, detailing the plan to build the AI agent application store ‘Ryzome’ with MCP as the core.

The idea of AI agents planning, coordinating, and executing real-world tasks together to generate value seems to be the way forward for all market leaders. With Arc leveraging MCP, we may see more use cases transitioning from Web2 to Web3, such as searching for flights, comparing routes, checking calendar conflicts, approving itineraries, and autonomously completing purchases.

Arc recently welcomed @FabelisAI and @AgentTankLive as partners through the “Arc Handshake” (similar to Virtual’s registry).

Arc’s first project launched on the platform ‘Forge’ a month ago is @askjimmy_ai. However, due to various factors such as market downturn and launch failures, the launch did not meet expectations, affecting the price of ARC. Nevertheless, Arc’s attention and activities on GitHub are still growing.

Competition

Intense competition among market leaders. The initial stage of garbage robots and AI entertainment has ended. Now, people expect to see real use cases that can generate value and income.

Virtuals has a large agent database (17,000+) and various professional knowledge, as well as the favorable development by ACP, but faces dissatisfaction from the builders.

ElizaOS has not yet launched its main initiatives, but development indicators show continued growth despite the weak price trend.

Arc has a clearer vision of MCP driver use cases and works strategically with project partners to achieve these use cases.

Clanker is still a dark horse, focusing on tokenization and providing the best launch environment for creators and traders. Who can launch the most meaningful use cases for agents and real-world products will lead the ecosystem’s recovery. Strong token economics are also crucial to capturing product value.

Other interesting news/trends

AI-driven Vibecoding game ➞ Fly Pieter (created by Cursor + Anthropic) achieved nearly $100,000 in monthly revenue in 17 days.

@Farcade_AI has attracted attention with its AI-driven super casual gaming platform (400,000+ users, millions of gaming sessions). Users can create and/or play games on Farcade to earn Farcade points (yes, future airdrops)

@Cod3xOrg is offering a $1.5 million prize for the upcoming Spark Sophon trading competition. Cod3x trading agents will compete on visibility and price trends to win a share of the $1.5 million. The current v0.5 version of Cod3x trading agents is powerful but too complex for ordinary users (event/KPI-driven, fully customizable for executing complex strategies). The team plans to release more documentation soon and gradually optimize it to cater to ordinary retail users.

Robot technology is gaining attention ➞ @robotsdotfun launches a global search for alien fugitives, enhancing engagement. (Everyone is talking about robots/DePAI, $SAM is seen as the best bet against @frodobots, $TSLA is seen as the best choice for Web2 robots… Not advice/please do your own research)

@nillionnetwork is coming soon, the airdrop checker is now online.

@gizatechxyz has launched the Giza Protocol, aiming to connect AI agents with DeFi through MCP-driven trust, context-aware operations.

Conclusion

For Web3 AI agents in the first quarter of 2025, it is a difficult journey in terms of price, but innovation continues to accelerate. The focus now is on who can solve real-world problems, build the best value-added products, attract users, and generate revenue. All eyes are on who can quickly find their niche market.