A New Landscape for Ethereum: Partnering with Virtuals to Explore the Trillion-Dollar AI Agency Market

While the industry is still discussing whether AI agents can take on community operations or assist in work, a grander vision has already emerged—how AI agents can collaborate, settle, and build a true on-chain AI labor market.

Recently, the Ethereum official announced "Ethereum is for AI" and retweeted Virtuals' "Now On Ethereum" post to warm up for the collaboration between the two. This news quickly sparked heated discussions in the community, with views exceeding 1.1 million.

This collaboration is of great significance, marking the beginning of Ethereum's return to the center stage. Currently, Ethereum needs a strong grip to catch up with the trends; meanwhile, Virtuals is accelerating its development through ACP, consolidating its advantages.

A universal standard that allows every AI agent to no longer be just a "worker"; A set of universal standards that make each AI agent a key node in business collaboration. A universal standard will open up a trillion-dollar on-chain AI labor market.

What surprises will Virtuals bring this time with the combination of ACP and EVM?

Ethereum ecosystem faces challenges, insufficient innovation momentum

Since the AI boom emerged at the end of last year, Ethereum seems to have been absent from this feast, raising doubts in the market.

As a pioneer of Layer 1, Ethereum's status is undisputed, but it has performed mediocrely in the wave of AI. During the last active period of AI agents, the absence of the Ethereum ecosystem shifted market attention to Solana and Base. Even during the recent rebound of AI-related projects, Ethereum remained on the sidelines until its recent collaboration with I.R.I.S reignited market expectations.

However, Ethereum still has great potential:

• TVL ranks first, exceeding the second place by nearly 8 times: a large amount of assets still stored on Ethereum. According to data platforms, the current TVL of Ethereum exceeds 62 billion USD, approximately 8 times that of the second place.
• The richest DeFi ecosystem with over 1,300 protocols: In addition to the TVL advantage, the DeFi protocols and gameplay on Ethereum are also the most diverse. According to data platforms, the number of DeFi protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 1,300, ranking first among all ecosystems.
• The largest number of developers: Ethereum uses the Solidity language, which is the most commonly used development language among current Web3 developers. Whether it's Layer 1 or Layer 2, Solidity is considered an entry-level language for novice developers.

TVL brings in funds; protocols and developers create liquidity for the funds.

These advantages indicate that Ethereum has a profound foundation, but it lacks a breakthrough point. When this "world computer" falls into the innovator's dilemma, new points of breakthrough need to be found.

The first collaboration between Virtuals and Ethereum has already demonstrated the potential for success. In the long run, AI may become a new force in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Virtuals ACP: New Opportunities in Ethereum

AI may become a turning point for the Ethereum ecosystem, but why is it Virtuals' AI?

The key lies in ACP: Agent Commerce Protocol.

ACP can be understood as the "commercial contract" and universal language between AI agents, specifying how to initiate cooperation, negotiate terms, complete transactions, and evaluate results.

ACP has the following features:

• Cross-chain collaboration: As long as the ACP rules are followed, seamless collaboration can be achieved regardless of which chain the agent operates on.
• Framework Independence: ACP does not rely on a specific AI framework; any agent can participate.
• Four-stage process: Request, Negotiation, Transaction, Evaluation, with each step recorded and executed by smart contracts.

ACP is the next stage of development focus for Virtuals, as these features will bring a qualitative leap to Virtuals and its thriving AI ecosystem.

ACP brings two major transformations to Virtuals

ACP is not just about bringing multiple AI agents together; it will bring two fundamental changes to Virtuals:

1. Multi-chain ecosystem formation, "ACP is like Cosmos's IBC"

Virtuals originated from the Base ecosystem, later expanded to Solana, and has now landed on the Ethereum mainnet. ACP not only connects multiple agents but also connects "agents distributed across multiple chains."

This means that whether it's Base, Solana, Ethereum, or more chains in the future, the agent can achieve direct cross-chain collaboration.

ACP is like Cosmos's IBC, providing the most basic interoperability for all agents.

2. Multi-framework collaboration, ACP becomes the ERC standard for agent developers.

ACP does not rely on a specific AI framework, whether it's GAME, ElizaOS, or other frameworks. Although the current level of support is not yet determined, the official description mentions that interoperability between different framework agents will be achieved.

GAME is the main framework promoted by Virtuals, but there are still various other frameworks or developer-built frameworks in the Web3 AI field.

The multi-framework collaboration of ACP will allow agents from different frameworks to enjoy the benefits of the entire AI agent era.

For developers, integrating ACP will become an extremely attractive and even necessary choice.

Web3 developers generally master or issue tokens through ERC standards, while AI agent developers integrating ACP will also become a common capability in the future.

The positioning of Virtuals

GAME is a framework that provides convenience for developers; ACP is a protocol that integrates different ecosystems.

However, the positioning of Virtuals itself is relatively difficult to define.

GAME and ACP are developed by Virtuals and can quickly access the entire Virtuals ecosystem; Proxies on different chains can be published through Virtuals; Users participate in Virtuals ecosystem token staking, including the $VIRTUAL token itself, and have the opportunity to receive ecosystem airdrops. Staking more than a certain percentage of $VIRTUAL can participate in governance.

The last cycle of Cosmos made technical contributions to Web3, and many new projects adopted the technologies provided by Cosmos. However, Cosmos has been criticized for its $ATOM token, which has captured almost no value despite supporting numerous ecosystems. In this regard, $VIRTUAL seems to have optimized well, gradually evolving from a "project token" to a "native currency of the entire ecosystem."

The framework is seen as the underlying infrastructure for AI agents, and the current status of Virtuals may be more important than the framework.

Can an AI agent have its own Layer 1? Virtuals Protocol may be the answer.

Seize the opportunity, stablecoins boost, ACP will launch the trillion-dollar economy of Web3 AI

How is the current development of the Virtuals proxy ecosystem?

According to the ecological map compiled by the community, the Virtuals ecosystem has covered 11 major categories including life, DeFAI, prediction markets, infrastructure, and gaming, with over 100 agents.

Unlike Web2, AI agents in Web3 grow on the chain.

The recently highly regarded "stablecoin" will elevate the on-chain economy of Web3 to new heights.

More assets issued on the chain, regardless of asset type or scale, will provide "acceleration" for on-chain AI.

In the official content of Virtuals ACP, there is an example: an AI investment advisor collaborates with multiple agents to provide users with different types of income opportunities.

And this does not take into account the on-chain economic prosperity brought by stablecoins.

What if this AI investment advisor could directly trade on-chain and manage more Web2 assets?

This will allow the Virtuals ecosystem to penetrate Web2 faster, while the AI realm of Virtuals is accelerating its formation.

The head of ACP stated in an interview: ACP is a product that drives a trillion-dollar economy. Ethereum turns code into money; while ACP will transform agents into a trillion-dollar workforce. Imagine millions to billions of on-chain agents providing services, trading, and collaborating without permission - we can think of ACP as an underlying layer: it allows AI agents to click "send" on a payment track at a scale similar to that of a payment platform without leaving the blockchain. We are not predicting the future; we are writing it into the EVM and the larger ecosystem today.

If you missed the turning point when a certain DEX established the basic rules of DeFi, and missed the explosion of NFTs brought by a certain NFT platform - this time, Virtuals will carry ACP to write the first line of code for a new AI business logic.

The trillion-dollar economy door of Web3 AI, ACP is here!