A Review of the Five Waves of Web3 AI Projects

Since the intersection of blockchain and AI, the crypto space has experienced five major waves of AI concept trends. Each wave is led by representative projects or events, demonstrating an evolution from pure conceptual hype to gradual technological exploration.

01. The First Wave ( Early Exploration Period ) - The Emergence 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 excitement was triggered by the market reaction following the launch of ChatGPT in early 2023. OpenAI's ChatGPT gained popularity at the end of 2022, allowing the public to witness the power of AI entering the general civilian domain, reminiscent of the internet explosion after home computers became widespread over 20 years ago and the frenzy of mobile internet products caused by the hot sale of smartphones a decade ago. The emergence of ChatGPT has made ordinary users truly feel that it can enhance their work efficiency.

A major characteristic of the crypto space is that "everything hot can be speculated on", which has led to endless imagination in the Crypto market regarding the prospects of "AI + Blockchain" sparked by ChatGPT. Since January 2023, a batch of early AI concept tokens has seen 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 skyrocketed in January 2023, increasing several times within a month(, with its market value once exceeding 200 million USD. During the same period, AI-related tokens 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 between 2017 and 2019 have been revitalized by the tailwind 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 on the ground, and the increase was mainly driven by market sentiment and the yearning for the major trend of AI.

02. The Second Wave - This Round of "Crypto Bull Market" Fuels AI Meme Coins

If we define the continuous strength of BTC starting from the end of 2023 as the core theme of this round of "crypto bull market", then the two tracks that stirred up waves during this period are: one is the inscriptions and runes classified under the BTC ecosystem, which brought a wave of excitement through 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 — said 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 funding of only $69. Surprisingly, this frog-themed meme coin, "orchestrated" by artificial intelligence, skyrocketed shortly after its launch, attracting significant attention from retail investors. TURBO rose to fame with its unique story of "AI creating the next great meme coin," and after being listed on multiple mainstream exchanges, its price increased hundreds of times in just a few weeks, briefly ranking among the popular meme coins.

The core characteristic 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 storylines, launching various meme tokens with AI elements. On one hand, investors are inspired by the AI wave, while on the other hand, they flock to these high-risk tokens with a gambling mindset. However, in essence, these meme coins have no real AI technology content and are merely community games based on the hype of AI concepts. For instance, TURBO itself has no application functionality; "AI-driven" is just a marketing gimmick, and its value is mainly supported by community consensus and speculative psychology. The second wave of enthusiasm is gradually declining in the second half of 2024, with many AI meme coins rapidly going to zero, and the market is starting to cool down.

03. The Third Wave - AI Agent Meme and the 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) AI智能体( concept, which pushed hype from simple memes to automated agents with storylines. The iconic event driving this wave of enthusiasm was the explosion of Goatseus Maximus) $GOAT(.

$GOAT was initially issued as a meme coin on the Solana chain, but unlike before, it is wrapped in a story of "AI Agent Genesis": It is said that an AI agent named "Truth GPT" ) was created by developer Andy Ayrey (, who aimed to create a blockbuster meme coin, and even caught the attention and sponsorship of renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen ). Andreessen personally provided $50,000 in startup funds to this AI (. With such a storyline backing it, GOAT ignited market sentiment instantly after its launch—its price surged 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 "AI-powered super meme coin."

The GOAT craze reveals the power of the AI Agent Narrative ) in the crypto space: teams or communities conceptualize a story of a "self-sufficient AI" leading the project, giving the tokens a sci-fi-like hype. For example, claims that AI agents manage funds and execute tasks independently, without human intervention, endow the tokens with a sense of mystery and futurism. During this period, in addition to GOAT, other concepts related to AI agents have emerged, such as TruthGPT and various AI trading Agent DAOs claiming to trade automatically, many of which have also seen short-term price surges.

However, most projects remain at the narrative stage, meaning they can only tell stories. The so-called AI agents are often just scripts with preset logic, far from truly autonomous intelligent applications, let alone discussing the effectiveness of those applications. This wave of enthusiasm peaked around January 2025 and then collapsed—external events like (, for example, when Trump announced the issuance of his personal Meme coin $TRUMP in January 2025, drained market funds ), causing speculative hot money to withdraw, and the prices of coins like GOAT quickly fell. The entire AI Agent sector has plummeted from the hot trend it was a few months ago to a low point.

04. The Fourth Wave - The Rise of AI Ecosystem + Basic Concepts of AI Agents

After the previous waves of hype receded, a batch of AI projects focusing more on technology and ecosystem building emerged by the end of 2024. Unlike the previous phase mainly driven by community hype, this stage saw the emergence of AI platform projects with notable backgrounds or serious visions. Typical examples include: ai16z and Virtuals, which are regarded as representatives of the "a16z AI ecosystem" and dramatically mimic the well-known venture capital a16z in name. These projects share the common goal of building AI Agent infrastructure, attempting to become the "app store" for AI agents in the Web3 domain.

$AI16z is a phenomenal AI Meme coin that rose to prominence in November 2024, with its name alluding to the famous venture capital firm a16z. The project is essentially positioned as a decentralized AI smart trading fund based on Solana, known as "AI Investment DAO", which primarily utilizes AI agents to gather on-chain and off-chain market information, analyze community sentiment, and execute trades automatically. This novel concept instantly ignited market attention after its launch: within just one day of going live at the end of October 2024, its market capitalization skyrocketed from zero to approximately $80 million, fueling the enthusiasm of speculators. Surprisingly, a16z founder Marc Andreessen even publicly endorsed it on Twitter, personally retweeting the concept introduction and link for AI16z. With the backing of prominent figures and the narrative 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 to evolve the project into an "AI Layer1" in December 2024: specifically launching a Launchpad dedicated to serving AI agents, making the ai16z token the base currency and transaction fee medium for agent trading, and designing node incentives and value buyback mechanisms, among others. At this stage, we can see that the project side 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 constructed 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 of the top projects within the Virtuals ecosystem reached over $5 billion, with the FDV of the corresponding tokens for the Eliza framework also reaching about half of that, which is in the tens of billions. Other standout projects, such as AIXBT, saw peak market values of several hundred million dollars. During this time, 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, despite claiming ecological prosperity, Virtuals reportedly had daily actual revenue of less than $500 after its launch, creating a stark contrast with its sky-high valuation. As the market as a whole began to cool in early 2025, the value of these projects' tokens generally halved or even collapsed, showing that having only grand visions and narratives is insufficient to support prices.

Therefore, as of now, the representatives of the fourth wave have not truly become the "app store" for AI Agents, but are more like platforms such as Pump.fun, which concentrate on AI Agent memes. While everyone is waiting to see if it can break out of its cocoon and be reborn, the fifth wave has surged in.

05. Fifth Wave - "Hundreds of Flowers Awaiting to Bloom" Closer to Practical Applications

After a brief period of stagnation, the WEB3 AI sector is experiencing a resurgence in early Q2 of 2025. This time, the hotspots have begun to clearly show a "return to reality": there are focuses on new generation AI Agent real platforms and tools; there are new AI ecosystems specifically suitable for the operation of AI projects; there are decentralized features for utilizing user data for value storage; and even some that combine WEB3 AI with other high-tech tracks like robotics. All of these present a "blooming flowers" phenomenon, and we look forward to the day when these practical projects can truly have a day of "a hundred flowers blooming". Below, we list some examples from the fifth wave for everyone's 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 named "Zentients," envisioning the use of the ZEREBRO token as a medium for the creation costs and value feedback of AI Agents. The scenario depicted by Zerebro is that anyone can generate their own AI agent on the platform with one click, such as an email assistant, programming assistant, trading bot, etc., and issue corresponding sub-tokens for the agents; 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 in early 2025. Especially after undergoing preliminary adjustments, ZEREBRO surged 400% in just two days in April 2025, attracting significant market attention. During the same period, other related projects also experienced explosive growth: for instance, the $AIOS token, known as the "Agent Operating System," rebounded tenfold, and the Crypto AI sector, which had been quiet for months, became active again. Investors' imagination is shifting from a singular AI Agent to the 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 and Web3 value capture. Although Zerebro and others have planned rich functionalities, the actual products have not yet fully materialized during the frenzy phase, and many application scenarios remain in testing or demo stages.

Just in the past week, Zerebro once again exploded onto the market, but in a rather bizarre and ironic way: Zerebro's co-founder Jeffy Yu posted a "suicide" video online, and then one