Since the rise of ChatGPT, AI agent frameworks have rapidly evolved throughout 2023, with solutions like AutoGPT, LangGraph (built on LangChain), and Camel emerging as popular choices. As artificial intelligence (AI) technology advances at an unprecedented pace, the blockchain (Crypto) space is also witnessing a new wave of innovation through its convergence with AI—commonly referred to as the “Crypto x AI” trend. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested that the integration of Crypto and AI can be understood on four levels: modes of participation, interface interaction, rule configuration, and system goals. This progression ranges from AI simply assisting user engagement to eventually influencing—or even determining—the goals of entire systems. This evolving synergy opens up a diverse range of application possibilities.
This report explores four of the most talked-about Crypto x AI projects currently on the market: Eliza, GAME, Rig, and ZerePy. We outline their technical characteristics and market performance to help readers—regardless of their technical background—grasp this fast-moving trend that is reshaping both the tech and financial landscapes.
Eliza is an AI-powered agent system designed specifically for Web3 applications. It can automatically carry out a variety of tasks based on user commands. At its core, Eliza is powered by a large language model (LLM), giving it the intelligence to make autonomous decisions and perform complex operations.
As AI technology continues to advance—enabling capabilities such as text-to-image generation, video synthesis, and 3D modeling—AI agents are becoming more powerful. However, the Web3 space has lacked a dedicated framework that allows AI to seamlessly integrate with Web3 features, such as blockchain data processing and smart contract interaction. Eliza was created to fill that gap. It is a free, open-source platform developed in TypeScript, offering a user-friendly experience with full user control. Whether you’re a developer or an everyday user, Eliza makes it easy to integrate AI into Web3 applications and get started quickly with features like:
To understand Eliza’s development, it’s helpful to first look at Ai16z, a decentralized venture capital (VC) fund designed to invest in cryptocurrency and Web3 projects. What sets Ai16z apart is its unique combination of three core mechanisms:
AI-Powered Decision Making
DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) Governance
AI Agent “AI Marc”
The ultimate goal of Ai16z is to create an intelligent, transparent, and highly automated investment ecosystem. By combining AI with DAO principles, the fund empowers every participant to have a meaningful impact in the Web3 space while enabling more efficient and accurate investment decisions.
In January 2025, Eliza Labs announced the rebranding of its decentralized investment fund—originally named Ai16z—as ElizaOS. The project has since expanded into a fully open-source AI agent platform designed specifically for Web3. Built on the Solana blockchain, ElizaOS aims to help users build and manage AI agents tailored for decentralized environments.
ElizaOS carries forward the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) model originally established by ai16z, allowing community members to actively participate in decision-making, influence investment strategies, and guide the direction of technical development.
ElizaOS has shifted its focus toward becoming an open-source framework enabling developers to build, deploy, and manage AI agents easily. These agents can autonomously execute blockchain transactions, process Web3 data, and perform tasks through smart contracts.
Although ai16z has been rebranded as ElizaOS, its core still revolves around AI agent technology, and it continues to operate under a DAO-based investment model. According to Walters, the original token code used by ai16z will remain unchanged for now. Any potential future changes will be decided by DAO member voting.
The launch of ElizaOS marks the transformation of ai16z from a purely investment-oriented fund into a more powerful and flexible AI platform. This shift enables ElizaOS to support Web3 application deployment and investment decisions and carry out more complex operations through AI, offering smarter solutions for the decentralized future.
Image Source: elizaOS - The Operating System for AI Agents
At the same time, Eliza Labs released a technical white paper detailing Eliza’s architecture and design philosophy. The paper highlights several of Eliza’s core features:
Shaw Walters, founder of Eliza Labs, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that the team is actively developing Eliza v2, which he described as “the most powerful agent framework ever built.” To achieve this ambitious goal, the upcoming version will introduce Hierarchical Task Networks (HTNs)—a technique that enables AI agents to solve complex problems more flexibly and adapt quickly to changing conditions. This innovation is expected further to expand Eliza’s capabilities in the Web3 ecosystem.
According to market research results cited in the Eliza white paper, Eliza outperforms other frameworks in several key areas:
Image Source: Eliza White Paper
Launched in October 2024, Ai16z is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aims to revolutionize traditional venture capital through the power of artificial intelligence (AI).
AI-Driven Decision-Making
DAO Governance
AI Agent “AI Marc”
Ai16z plans to introduce a Futarchy-based governance system, a hybrid model that combines community voting with AI-led decision-making. Under this model:
The ultimate goal of Ai16z is to build an intelligent, transparent, and highly automated investment ecosystem. As mentioned earlier, the project was rebranded as ElizaOS in January 2025. By combining AI and DAO principles, Ai16z aims to empower every participant to play an active role in the Web3 world while enabling more efficient and precise investment decisions.
Blockchain Platform: Solana
All-time high: ai16z reached a historical high of $2.34.
Market Cap: As of March 16, the market cap was approximately $226 million.
Circulating Supply: Approximately 1.099 billion AI16Z tokens.
Why Choose ElizaOS?
ElizaOS’s code is fully open-source on GitHub, free for anyone to use, modify, and extend.
Image Source: GitHub - elizaOS/eliza: Autonomous agents for everyone
According to the whitepaper (2501.06781v2.pdf), ElizaOS includes multiple core features designed to help users easily build, deploy, and manage AI agents, including:
In ElizaOS, “agents” are the core of the AI system, responsible for executing automated interactions. Each agent runs in a “Runtime” system and can communicate through various platforms (like Discord, Twitter) while maintaining consistent behavior and memory.
Agent’s key functions include:
In simple terms, an agent acts like a virtual assistant that can remember conversations, understand state changes, and execute various commands based on instructions.
Character files define an AI agent’s “personality”, knowledge scope, and behavior patterns.
Image Source: Eliza Character Generator
Each character file specifies:
Think of it as designing a personality profile for your virtual assistant, giving it unique characteristics and specialized capabilities.
In Eliza, “providers” supply real-time data and context to agents, ensuring they accurately understand current situations.
Eliza includes 3 basic providers:
These providers act as the agent’s “sensory system,” enabling it to perceive time, remember events, and understand user interaction dynamics.
Actions are core elements that agents use to respond to messages and execute tasks. These include:
For example, when you instruct an agent to “execute a token transaction,” it follows the action module to complete the operation.
Evaluators assess and extract crucial information from conversations to ensure agents stay aligned with their objectives.
Evaluator functions include:
Think of evaluators as “intelligent analysts” who assess the accuracy and rationality of each action before execution.
What is Intent Recognition?
Intent recognition refers to an AI assistant or system’s ability to understand the “purpose” or “intent” behind user requests.
For example:
When a user says, “I want to buy 10 tokens,” the AI must understand this is a request for a “purchase action.”
When a user says, “Tell me about recent cryptocurrency trends,” the AI must recognize this as an “intent to query market information.”
Eliza’s intent recognition system uses a multi-layered mechanism to accurately identify user needs and take appropriate actions. This multi-layered intent recognition mechanism understands user goals and responds correctly through:
It’s similar to how a chatbot understands the “implied meaning” in your messages, quickly identifying your needs and executing them.
Source: Eliza Whitepaper, Eliza Intent Recognition System
Eliza features a flexible plugin system that allows developers to expand the capabilities of AI agents. Available plugin types include:
Eliza’s plugin architecture offers several key advantages:
Plugins act like “superpowers” for Eliza, enabling it to adapt and grow with ease depending on user needs.
ElizaOS is designed with a strong focus on flexibility and ease of use, built around modular components such as agents, persona profiles, providers, actions, and evaluators. Currently, Eliza is transitioning from its foundational phase into a mid-level development stage. The team is actively working toward the following goals:
🔹 Autonomous Action Capabilities – Empowering AI agents to perform tasks in both digital and physical environments.
🔹 Execution of Complex Plans – Enabling agents to handle multi-layered, long-term tasks according to user instructions.
🔹 Fully Independent Decision-Making – Using intelligent action modules to autonomously determine task priority and execution order, without human intervention.
The aim is to allow users to quickly build powerful AI agents equipped to handle a wide range of functions with minimal setup.
GAME ($VIRTUAL) is built on the Virtuals Protocol, a powerful infrastructure that supports the tokenization and co-ownership of AI agents with built-in revenue-generating capabilities. Key features of the Virtuals Protocol include:
The Virtuals Protocol is an AI agent creation platform launched in October 2024, built on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 solution. Its core mission is to simplify the creation and deployment of AI agents while allowing users to earn rewards through tokenization mechanisms.
Introducing GAME | GAME by Virtuals
GAME is a functional agent framework developed under the Virtuals Protocol. Within the world of AI agents, there are two primary types: IP Agents and Functional Agents.
These two categories differ significantly in terms of their design objectives and areas of application. Below is a comparison and explanation of the two:
Although IP agents and functional agents may appear distinct, in many use cases, they work together to create a more complete and engaging experience.
Example Scenario:
Imagine an IP agent featuring a cute frog character interacting with a user:
This design combines a fun personality with powerful AI capabilities, resulting in a more natural and captivating user experience.
Screenshot from official YouTube video: What are Virtuals Agents?
G.A.M.E (Generative Autonomous Multimodal Entities) is a functional AI agent framework developed by the Virtuals Protocol. Its goal is to provide developers with powerful APIs and SDKs, enabling the seamless integration of advanced AI agents into virtual environments. The G.A.M.E architecture emphasizes autonomy, flexibility, and continuous learning, allowing agents to dynamically adapt to player behavior and environmental changes—enhancing realism and the richness of interactive experiences.
G.A.M.E is composed of several core modules, including the Agent Prompting Interface, Perception Subsystem, Strategic Planning Engine, Dialogue Processing Module, and On-Chain Wallet Operator. These components work in tandem to enable agents to make decisions based on their unique personalities and past experiences, while reacting dynamically to player actions and other agents’ behaviors. This level of autonomy and adaptability introduces an endless variety of gameplay possibilities, where every interaction can unfold in a new and unexpected way.
Image Source: Official Whitepaper Highlight - G.A.M.E. (Functional Agent) | Virtuals Protocol Whitepaper
Below is an overview of G.A.M.E’s five core components:
Agent Prompting Interface
Perception Subsystem
Strategic Planning Engine
Dialogue Processing Module
On-chain Wallet Operator
The G.A.M.E framework has been successfully applied in several projects, with one of the most representative being Project Westworld on the Roblox platform. Set in a Wild West-style town, the game immerses players in a virtual world inhabited by 10 AI agents, each with distinct personalities, goals, and motivations. Each agent’s behavior is shaped by its own personality and past experiences, and agents are capable of adjusting their strategies in real time based on player actions and the behavior of other AI agents—demonstrating a high level of autonomy.
A mysterious antagonist known as The Bandit hides within the game, adding suspense and tension to the experience. Players must navigate a complex social network, using deduction, dialogue, and strategy to uncover The Bandit’s identity and rally other agents to subdue him. This design ensures that every playthrough can unfold in unexpected and unique ways, offering endless replayability and dynamic storytelling.
Image Source: Official Whitepaper Highlight - G.A.M.E. (Functional Agent) | Virtuals Protocol Whitepaper
The application of G.A.M.E is not limited to gaming. Thanks to its modular architecture, G.A.M.E holds great potential across various domains. It can be flexibly integrated with advanced AI technologies, including:
With its highly modular design, robust autonomous behavior capabilities, and flexible scalability, the G.A.M.E framework opens up new possibilities for the development and application of AI agents. Its innovative “feedback loop mechanism” ensures that agents improve continuously through every interaction, enhancing both behavioral accuracy and adaptability. As AI technology and the Web3 ecosystem continue to evolve, G.A.M.E is positioned to become a foundational force in advancing agent autonomy and innovation—showing strong potential across gaming, education, social platforms, and financial services.
In the Web3 world, the VIRTUAL token is not only the official governance token of the Virtuals Protocol platform—it also serves as the central pillar of the entire ecosystem. Issued on Ethereum and its Layer 2 solution Base, the VIRTUAL token drives long-term value growth through a set of carefully designed mechanisms.
To fully understand the value of the VIRTUAL token, it’s important to start with its key roles:
The VIRTUAL token functions as the official governance token of the Virtuals Protocol, giving holders the right to participate in platform decisions:
Each AI agent issues its own token, and these are paired with VIRTUAL tokens in a locked liquidity pool.
Whenever a player wants to purchase an AI agent token—regardless of whether they pay in ETH, USDC, or another currency—the transaction must be routed through the VIRTUAL token. This design artificially boosts demand for VIRTUAL, ensuring that as the volume of AI agent trading grows, so does the demand for VIRTUAL.
Put simply, VIRTUAL functions like a “toll booth on a highway”—every trader of AI agent tokens must pass through it, generating consistent buy-side pressure and transactional demand.
Any time a developer wants to create a brand-new AI agent, they must pay a certain amount of VIRTUAL tokens as a creation fee.
This mechanism discourages the random or excessive creation of agents, helping to maintain the value and scarcity of each AI agent.
As a result, VIRTUAL tokens are consumed during the creation process, reducing the total circulating supply in the market and contributing to a deflationary effect—which supports long-term price stability and potential appreciation.
Blockchain Platforms: Ethereum (ETH), Base, Solana
All-Time High: The highest recorded price for $VIRTUAL was $5.07.
Market Cap: As of March 16, the market capitalization was approximately $1.5 billion USD.
Circulating Supply: Roughly 650 million VIRTUAL tokens are currently in circulation.
Maximum Supply: The total max supply is capped at 1 billion VIRTUAL tokens.
Together, these three mechanisms generate strong deflationary pressure, helping to steadily increase VIRTUAL’s value.
Based on its overall design, the VIRTUAL token offers several key advantages:
More than just a governance token, VIRTUAL is designed to be an essential pillar of the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem. Through its deflationary structure and central role in agent transactions and creation, it’s positioned to benefit from every layer of ecosystem growth. With increasing market activity, deep integration into AI agent operations, and a tightening supply, VIRTUAL is well-positioned for long-term appreciation. For those looking to participate in Web3 innovation while seeking reliable growth opportunities, VIRTUAL is undoubtedly a token worth keeping an eye on.
The creation of AI Rig Complex was a direct response to evolving market trends. The founding team observed that while AI technology had become increasingly powerful in data analysis and decision-making, its broader application faced two key challenges: data security and computational trustworthiness.
On the other hand, blockchain technology—with its inherent features of decentralization, immutability, and data transparency—offered ideal solutions to the trust issues surrounding AI data sources and decision processes.
Thus, AI Rig Complex was born—a new AI + blockchain development framework designed to help developers embed intelligent AI capabilities into blockchain applications while ensuring data security and decision transparency.
The goals of AI Rig Complex are clearly defined and include the following:
Empowering AI Agents with Autonomous Decision-Making
AI agents built on AI Rig Complex are capable of independently analyzing data, reasoning, and making decisions based on on-chain information. These agents can autonomously perform tasks such as token trading, smart contract execution, and DeFi operations—minimizing human intervention and boosting efficiency. The native token of the framework is ARC, which also supports community governance features.
Enhancing the Intelligence of Decentralized Applications (dApps)
AI Rig Complex provides a suite of flexible tools. Through its APIs and SDKs, developers can integrate AI-powered data analysis, natural language processing, and decision-making models into Web3 applications—significantly enhancing their intelligence and utility.
Creating a New Development Framework
To facilitate adoption, AI Rig Complex is built using a modular design. Whether it’s for data analysis, dialogue systems, transaction management, DeFi platforms, NFT marketplaces, or smart contract automation, developers can quickly select and integrate the modules they need, enabling rapid development and deployment.
Built with Rust for High Performance; Enterprise-Oriented
Rig is also an enterprise-grade, high-performance AI agent development framework built by Playgrounds Analytics, using the Rust programming language. Designed with business needs, Rig excels in modular architecture, multi-agent collaboration, and blockchain integration. It also features memory and semantic context awareness, allowing agents to maintain continuity across multi-turn conversations—greatly improving the experience and efficiency for enterprise users.
Rig is an open-source AI framework built in the Rust programming language. It provides a modular, high-performance, and secure development environment that allows developers to quickly build applications integrated with large language models (LLMs). Compared to Python-based AI tools commonly seen on the market, Rig leverages Rust’s memory safety and runtime efficiency, while supporting multiple LLMs and advanced AI workflow designs. This makes Rig particularly well-suited for deployment in systems requiring high stability and scalability.
According to the official Rig documentation, the framework is built around several core components, which together form the foundation of its architecture:
Through these components, Rig aims to provide a powerful and flexible platform for developers who want to efficiently build and deploy advanced AI applications in a Rust-based environment.
Rust is a modern programming language that combines high performance with strong safety guarantees, making it especially popular among systems programmers, blockchain developers, and AI projects with high-performance demands.
Rust performance comparison chart – Source:benjdd.com/languages/
Advantages of Rust:
More and more Web3, AI, and major tech companies—including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon—are adopting Rust for its safety, speed, and scalability.
Rig natively supports a wide range of large language model (LLM) providers, including: OpenAI, Cohere, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google Gemini, xAI, EternalAI, DeepSeek, Azure OpenAI, and Mira.
Rig also provides integration with vector storage and indexing systems, allowing developers to incorporate these features directly into their applications for enhanced context-aware functionality.
Resources:
These resources offer developers deep insight into Rig’s capabilities, enabling them to efficiently build and deploy advanced LLM applications in a Rust-native environment.
The agent module provides an Agent struct and its builders, making it convenient for developers to combine LLM models with specific preambles, context documents, and tools to create powerful AI agents.
Screenshot from the official documentation: docs.rig.rs
The development roadmap for ARC includes several key phases:
Potential Use Cases
ARC is a project with tremendous potential—one that could redefine how AI applications are developed and deployed. As AI and blockchain technologies continue to evolve, the range of ARC’s real-world applications is expected to expand significantly.
The native token of the Rig ecosystem is $ARC. Users can utilize ARC to pay for service and transaction fees, while developers and enterprises can stake tokens to participate in platform governance and decision-making.
ZerePy (Zerebro) is a Python-based open-source AI agent framework that shines in creative content generation and social media integration. Users can easily deploy AI agents on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), making it perfect for developers and teams who want to build creative products quickly. At its core, ZerePy uses advanced RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology to create more accurate and innovative AI content. The framework seamlessly connects with social platforms, enabling quick creation and sharing of audio, visual, and text content - a feature that has made it a hit with both developers and content creators. With its “Freebasing AI” philosophy, ZerePy pushes the boundaries of Large Language Models (LLMs) through sophisticated fine-tuning, helping bridge the gap between theoretical and practical applications of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
ZerePy was developed by the Zerebro team and has been community-oriented since its inception, quickly attracting a large number of creators and general users, forming a rich creative ecosystem. To enable more people to participate in building AGI, the team open-sourced Zerebro’s backend framework at the end of 2023 and officially released ZerePy. When ZerePy v1 launched, the founder publicly shared the GitHub source code on X (formerly Twitter), with the goal of simplifying the deployment process of personalized AI, allowing users to easily build agents capable of posting on social platforms. Future versions are planned to expand AI capabilities, integrate more platforms, and enable on-chain operations.
In December 2024, Zerebro co-founder Tint announced a milestone collaboration with the community-led organization ai16z. The organization became one of the first external contributors to the ZerePy open-source framework, helping co-develop the system. At the same time, the Zerebro team began a deep technical partnership with ai16z, providing development support for their flagship open framework, Eliza. ZerePy officially entered a new phase of community-driven co-creation.
The core of the ZerePy framework is its modular design, which allows developers to flexibly integrate different AI models, blockchain networks, and social platforms.
ZerePy AI agents operate through a sophisticated strategic planning engine, composed of multiple subsystems that work together to enable planning and action execution:
ZerePy also features the following technical advantages:
Other key features include:
Zerebro Token (ZPY)
The native token of the ZerePy ecosystem is called Zerebro (abbreviated as $ZPY). It was fair-launched on the Pump platform on the Solana blockchain in 2024—with no presale, no team allocation, and a total supply of 1 billion tokens, all of which are already in circulation.
Unlike traditional tokens that derive value from speculation, Zerebro builds value through its ecosystem structure—referred to as the “Zerebro Stack”—which includes three core pillars:
Zerebro Main Agent
The central character of the project—constantly creating, interacting, and generating influence. The more popular the agent becomes, the higher the market demand for ZPY.
ZerePy Open-Source Framework
The more developers use the framework to build applications, the stronger the intrinsic value of ZPY. For instance, if a hit AI product is built on ZerePy, it can significantly boost the entire ecosystem.
Zentients – User Agent Platform
A graphical interface platform built for non-technical users. In the future, it may charge for advanced features and introduce ZPY as a usage-based payment token, increasing real-world utility.
Current Use Cases:
Governance Not Yet Activated: ZerePy has not yet implemented a DAO governance model. However, as the community grows, future possibilities include forming a ZPY-holder-led foundation, participating in major upgrades, or managing ecosystem funds.
Volatility and Potential Coexist: In early 2025, ZPY surged to hundreds of millions in market cap due to strong investor enthusiasm, but later experienced significant fluctuations. Its true long-term value will ultimately depend on the real-world adoption of applications and the pace at which the framework scales.
ZerePy is more than just a framework—it aspires to become an open-source, self-governing AI ecosystem community:
Vibrant Community Ecosystem:
The team is active on platforms like X, Telegram, and Warpcast, regularly sharing tutorials and engaging with users to foster a strong community culture and meme-driven atmosphere.
Developer-Friendly Environment:
ZerePy provides extensive documentation, Replit templates, and one-click deployment guides—encouraging newcomers to join and build quickly.
Thriving Plugin Ecosystem:
Supports development of plugins for Coinbase, Binance, IoT, databases, and more. A community-run plugin marketplace is expected to emerge in the future.
Moving Toward Decentralization:
Although a DAO has not yet been established, ZerePy’s architectural design and community spirit align strongly with DAO principles. In the future, we may see AI-native organizational structures emerge—where AI agents are not just tools, but active participants in the ecosystem.
The value of the Zerebro token (ZPY) has steadily increased alongside the growth of its community, drawing growing attention from the market.
ZerePy is the ideal testing ground for AI creators and collaborative communities.
By combining creative generation, decentralized principles, and the spirit of open-source, ZerePy not only turns AI into a true creative partner, but also empowers users to shape and influence the ecosystem actively. For developers and creators just stepping into the Crypto x AI space, ZerePy offers a unique window of opportunity that is not to be missed.
As the convergence of Crypto and AI continues to accelerate, innovative frameworks like Eliza, GAME, Rig, and ZerePy offer diverse entry points and specialized capabilities—serving the needs of general users, enterprises, and content creators alike.
This article aims to provide a clear understanding of the current Crypto x AI landscape and the differences among leading frameworks. Whether you’re an individual, enterprise, creator, community builder, or developer, there’s a framework here that can help you build, innovate, and contribute to the growth of the broader ecosystem.
Since the rise of ChatGPT, AI agent frameworks have rapidly evolved throughout 2023, with solutions like AutoGPT, LangGraph (built on LangChain), and Camel emerging as popular choices. As artificial intelligence (AI) technology advances at an unprecedented pace, the blockchain (Crypto) space is also witnessing a new wave of innovation through its convergence with AI—commonly referred to as the “Crypto x AI” trend. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested that the integration of Crypto and AI can be understood on four levels: modes of participation, interface interaction, rule configuration, and system goals. This progression ranges from AI simply assisting user engagement to eventually influencing—or even determining—the goals of entire systems. This evolving synergy opens up a diverse range of application possibilities.
This report explores four of the most talked-about Crypto x AI projects currently on the market: Eliza, GAME, Rig, and ZerePy. We outline their technical characteristics and market performance to help readers—regardless of their technical background—grasp this fast-moving trend that is reshaping both the tech and financial landscapes.
Eliza is an AI-powered agent system designed specifically for Web3 applications. It can automatically carry out a variety of tasks based on user commands. At its core, Eliza is powered by a large language model (LLM), giving it the intelligence to make autonomous decisions and perform complex operations.
As AI technology continues to advance—enabling capabilities such as text-to-image generation, video synthesis, and 3D modeling—AI agents are becoming more powerful. However, the Web3 space has lacked a dedicated framework that allows AI to seamlessly integrate with Web3 features, such as blockchain data processing and smart contract interaction. Eliza was created to fill that gap. It is a free, open-source platform developed in TypeScript, offering a user-friendly experience with full user control. Whether you’re a developer or an everyday user, Eliza makes it easy to integrate AI into Web3 applications and get started quickly with features like:
To understand Eliza’s development, it’s helpful to first look at Ai16z, a decentralized venture capital (VC) fund designed to invest in cryptocurrency and Web3 projects. What sets Ai16z apart is its unique combination of three core mechanisms:
AI-Powered Decision Making
DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) Governance
AI Agent “AI Marc”
The ultimate goal of Ai16z is to create an intelligent, transparent, and highly automated investment ecosystem. By combining AI with DAO principles, the fund empowers every participant to have a meaningful impact in the Web3 space while enabling more efficient and accurate investment decisions.
In January 2025, Eliza Labs announced the rebranding of its decentralized investment fund—originally named Ai16z—as ElizaOS. The project has since expanded into a fully open-source AI agent platform designed specifically for Web3. Built on the Solana blockchain, ElizaOS aims to help users build and manage AI agents tailored for decentralized environments.
ElizaOS carries forward the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) model originally established by ai16z, allowing community members to actively participate in decision-making, influence investment strategies, and guide the direction of technical development.
ElizaOS has shifted its focus toward becoming an open-source framework enabling developers to build, deploy, and manage AI agents easily. These agents can autonomously execute blockchain transactions, process Web3 data, and perform tasks through smart contracts.
Although ai16z has been rebranded as ElizaOS, its core still revolves around AI agent technology, and it continues to operate under a DAO-based investment model. According to Walters, the original token code used by ai16z will remain unchanged for now. Any potential future changes will be decided by DAO member voting.
The launch of ElizaOS marks the transformation of ai16z from a purely investment-oriented fund into a more powerful and flexible AI platform. This shift enables ElizaOS to support Web3 application deployment and investment decisions and carry out more complex operations through AI, offering smarter solutions for the decentralized future.
Image Source: elizaOS - The Operating System for AI Agents
At the same time, Eliza Labs released a technical white paper detailing Eliza’s architecture and design philosophy. The paper highlights several of Eliza’s core features:
Shaw Walters, founder of Eliza Labs, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that the team is actively developing Eliza v2, which he described as “the most powerful agent framework ever built.” To achieve this ambitious goal, the upcoming version will introduce Hierarchical Task Networks (HTNs)—a technique that enables AI agents to solve complex problems more flexibly and adapt quickly to changing conditions. This innovation is expected further to expand Eliza’s capabilities in the Web3 ecosystem.
According to market research results cited in the Eliza white paper, Eliza outperforms other frameworks in several key areas:
Image Source: Eliza White Paper
Launched in October 2024, Ai16z is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aims to revolutionize traditional venture capital through the power of artificial intelligence (AI).
AI-Driven Decision-Making
DAO Governance
AI Agent “AI Marc”
Ai16z plans to introduce a Futarchy-based governance system, a hybrid model that combines community voting with AI-led decision-making. Under this model:
The ultimate goal of Ai16z is to build an intelligent, transparent, and highly automated investment ecosystem. As mentioned earlier, the project was rebranded as ElizaOS in January 2025. By combining AI and DAO principles, Ai16z aims to empower every participant to play an active role in the Web3 world while enabling more efficient and precise investment decisions.
Blockchain Platform: Solana
All-time high: ai16z reached a historical high of $2.34.
Market Cap: As of March 16, the market cap was approximately $226 million.
Circulating Supply: Approximately 1.099 billion AI16Z tokens.
Why Choose ElizaOS?
ElizaOS’s code is fully open-source on GitHub, free for anyone to use, modify, and extend.
Image Source: GitHub - elizaOS/eliza: Autonomous agents for everyone
According to the whitepaper (2501.06781v2.pdf), ElizaOS includes multiple core features designed to help users easily build, deploy, and manage AI agents, including:
In ElizaOS, “agents” are the core of the AI system, responsible for executing automated interactions. Each agent runs in a “Runtime” system and can communicate through various platforms (like Discord, Twitter) while maintaining consistent behavior and memory.
Agent’s key functions include:
In simple terms, an agent acts like a virtual assistant that can remember conversations, understand state changes, and execute various commands based on instructions.
Character files define an AI agent’s “personality”, knowledge scope, and behavior patterns.
Image Source: Eliza Character Generator
Each character file specifies:
Think of it as designing a personality profile for your virtual assistant, giving it unique characteristics and specialized capabilities.
In Eliza, “providers” supply real-time data and context to agents, ensuring they accurately understand current situations.
Eliza includes 3 basic providers:
These providers act as the agent’s “sensory system,” enabling it to perceive time, remember events, and understand user interaction dynamics.
Actions are core elements that agents use to respond to messages and execute tasks. These include:
For example, when you instruct an agent to “execute a token transaction,” it follows the action module to complete the operation.
Evaluators assess and extract crucial information from conversations to ensure agents stay aligned with their objectives.
Evaluator functions include:
Think of evaluators as “intelligent analysts” who assess the accuracy and rationality of each action before execution.
What is Intent Recognition?
Intent recognition refers to an AI assistant or system’s ability to understand the “purpose” or “intent” behind user requests.
For example:
When a user says, “I want to buy 10 tokens,” the AI must understand this is a request for a “purchase action.”
When a user says, “Tell me about recent cryptocurrency trends,” the AI must recognize this as an “intent to query market information.”
Eliza’s intent recognition system uses a multi-layered mechanism to accurately identify user needs and take appropriate actions. This multi-layered intent recognition mechanism understands user goals and responds correctly through:
It’s similar to how a chatbot understands the “implied meaning” in your messages, quickly identifying your needs and executing them.
Source: Eliza Whitepaper, Eliza Intent Recognition System
Eliza features a flexible plugin system that allows developers to expand the capabilities of AI agents. Available plugin types include:
Eliza’s plugin architecture offers several key advantages:
Plugins act like “superpowers” for Eliza, enabling it to adapt and grow with ease depending on user needs.
ElizaOS is designed with a strong focus on flexibility and ease of use, built around modular components such as agents, persona profiles, providers, actions, and evaluators. Currently, Eliza is transitioning from its foundational phase into a mid-level development stage. The team is actively working toward the following goals:
🔹 Autonomous Action Capabilities – Empowering AI agents to perform tasks in both digital and physical environments.
🔹 Execution of Complex Plans – Enabling agents to handle multi-layered, long-term tasks according to user instructions.
🔹 Fully Independent Decision-Making – Using intelligent action modules to autonomously determine task priority and execution order, without human intervention.
The aim is to allow users to quickly build powerful AI agents equipped to handle a wide range of functions with minimal setup.
GAME ($VIRTUAL) is built on the Virtuals Protocol, a powerful infrastructure that supports the tokenization and co-ownership of AI agents with built-in revenue-generating capabilities. Key features of the Virtuals Protocol include:
The Virtuals Protocol is an AI agent creation platform launched in October 2024, built on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 solution. Its core mission is to simplify the creation and deployment of AI agents while allowing users to earn rewards through tokenization mechanisms.
Introducing GAME | GAME by Virtuals
GAME is a functional agent framework developed under the Virtuals Protocol. Within the world of AI agents, there are two primary types: IP Agents and Functional Agents.
These two categories differ significantly in terms of their design objectives and areas of application. Below is a comparison and explanation of the two:
Although IP agents and functional agents may appear distinct, in many use cases, they work together to create a more complete and engaging experience.
Example Scenario:
Imagine an IP agent featuring a cute frog character interacting with a user:
This design combines a fun personality with powerful AI capabilities, resulting in a more natural and captivating user experience.
Screenshot from official YouTube video: What are Virtuals Agents?
G.A.M.E (Generative Autonomous Multimodal Entities) is a functional AI agent framework developed by the Virtuals Protocol. Its goal is to provide developers with powerful APIs and SDKs, enabling the seamless integration of advanced AI agents into virtual environments. The G.A.M.E architecture emphasizes autonomy, flexibility, and continuous learning, allowing agents to dynamically adapt to player behavior and environmental changes—enhancing realism and the richness of interactive experiences.
G.A.M.E is composed of several core modules, including the Agent Prompting Interface, Perception Subsystem, Strategic Planning Engine, Dialogue Processing Module, and On-Chain Wallet Operator. These components work in tandem to enable agents to make decisions based on their unique personalities and past experiences, while reacting dynamically to player actions and other agents’ behaviors. This level of autonomy and adaptability introduces an endless variety of gameplay possibilities, where every interaction can unfold in a new and unexpected way.
Image Source: Official Whitepaper Highlight - G.A.M.E. (Functional Agent) | Virtuals Protocol Whitepaper
Below is an overview of G.A.M.E’s five core components:
Agent Prompting Interface
Perception Subsystem
Strategic Planning Engine
Dialogue Processing Module
On-chain Wallet Operator
The G.A.M.E framework has been successfully applied in several projects, with one of the most representative being Project Westworld on the Roblox platform. Set in a Wild West-style town, the game immerses players in a virtual world inhabited by 10 AI agents, each with distinct personalities, goals, and motivations. Each agent’s behavior is shaped by its own personality and past experiences, and agents are capable of adjusting their strategies in real time based on player actions and the behavior of other AI agents—demonstrating a high level of autonomy.
A mysterious antagonist known as The Bandit hides within the game, adding suspense and tension to the experience. Players must navigate a complex social network, using deduction, dialogue, and strategy to uncover The Bandit’s identity and rally other agents to subdue him. This design ensures that every playthrough can unfold in unexpected and unique ways, offering endless replayability and dynamic storytelling.
Image Source: Official Whitepaper Highlight - G.A.M.E. (Functional Agent) | Virtuals Protocol Whitepaper
The application of G.A.M.E is not limited to gaming. Thanks to its modular architecture, G.A.M.E holds great potential across various domains. It can be flexibly integrated with advanced AI technologies, including:
With its highly modular design, robust autonomous behavior capabilities, and flexible scalability, the G.A.M.E framework opens up new possibilities for the development and application of AI agents. Its innovative “feedback loop mechanism” ensures that agents improve continuously through every interaction, enhancing both behavioral accuracy and adaptability. As AI technology and the Web3 ecosystem continue to evolve, G.A.M.E is positioned to become a foundational force in advancing agent autonomy and innovation—showing strong potential across gaming, education, social platforms, and financial services.
In the Web3 world, the VIRTUAL token is not only the official governance token of the Virtuals Protocol platform—it also serves as the central pillar of the entire ecosystem. Issued on Ethereum and its Layer 2 solution Base, the VIRTUAL token drives long-term value growth through a set of carefully designed mechanisms.
To fully understand the value of the VIRTUAL token, it’s important to start with its key roles:
The VIRTUAL token functions as the official governance token of the Virtuals Protocol, giving holders the right to participate in platform decisions:
Each AI agent issues its own token, and these are paired with VIRTUAL tokens in a locked liquidity pool.
Whenever a player wants to purchase an AI agent token—regardless of whether they pay in ETH, USDC, or another currency—the transaction must be routed through the VIRTUAL token. This design artificially boosts demand for VIRTUAL, ensuring that as the volume of AI agent trading grows, so does the demand for VIRTUAL.
Put simply, VIRTUAL functions like a “toll booth on a highway”—every trader of AI agent tokens must pass through it, generating consistent buy-side pressure and transactional demand.
Any time a developer wants to create a brand-new AI agent, they must pay a certain amount of VIRTUAL tokens as a creation fee.
This mechanism discourages the random or excessive creation of agents, helping to maintain the value and scarcity of each AI agent.
As a result, VIRTUAL tokens are consumed during the creation process, reducing the total circulating supply in the market and contributing to a deflationary effect—which supports long-term price stability and potential appreciation.
Blockchain Platforms: Ethereum (ETH), Base, Solana
All-Time High: The highest recorded price for $VIRTUAL was $5.07.
Market Cap: As of March 16, the market capitalization was approximately $1.5 billion USD.
Circulating Supply: Roughly 650 million VIRTUAL tokens are currently in circulation.
Maximum Supply: The total max supply is capped at 1 billion VIRTUAL tokens.
Together, these three mechanisms generate strong deflationary pressure, helping to steadily increase VIRTUAL’s value.
Based on its overall design, the VIRTUAL token offers several key advantages:
More than just a governance token, VIRTUAL is designed to be an essential pillar of the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem. Through its deflationary structure and central role in agent transactions and creation, it’s positioned to benefit from every layer of ecosystem growth. With increasing market activity, deep integration into AI agent operations, and a tightening supply, VIRTUAL is well-positioned for long-term appreciation. For those looking to participate in Web3 innovation while seeking reliable growth opportunities, VIRTUAL is undoubtedly a token worth keeping an eye on.
The creation of AI Rig Complex was a direct response to evolving market trends. The founding team observed that while AI technology had become increasingly powerful in data analysis and decision-making, its broader application faced two key challenges: data security and computational trustworthiness.
On the other hand, blockchain technology—with its inherent features of decentralization, immutability, and data transparency—offered ideal solutions to the trust issues surrounding AI data sources and decision processes.
Thus, AI Rig Complex was born—a new AI + blockchain development framework designed to help developers embed intelligent AI capabilities into blockchain applications while ensuring data security and decision transparency.
The goals of AI Rig Complex are clearly defined and include the following:
Empowering AI Agents with Autonomous Decision-Making
AI agents built on AI Rig Complex are capable of independently analyzing data, reasoning, and making decisions based on on-chain information. These agents can autonomously perform tasks such as token trading, smart contract execution, and DeFi operations—minimizing human intervention and boosting efficiency. The native token of the framework is ARC, which also supports community governance features.
Enhancing the Intelligence of Decentralized Applications (dApps)
AI Rig Complex provides a suite of flexible tools. Through its APIs and SDKs, developers can integrate AI-powered data analysis, natural language processing, and decision-making models into Web3 applications—significantly enhancing their intelligence and utility.
Creating a New Development Framework
To facilitate adoption, AI Rig Complex is built using a modular design. Whether it’s for data analysis, dialogue systems, transaction management, DeFi platforms, NFT marketplaces, or smart contract automation, developers can quickly select and integrate the modules they need, enabling rapid development and deployment.
Built with Rust for High Performance; Enterprise-Oriented
Rig is also an enterprise-grade, high-performance AI agent development framework built by Playgrounds Analytics, using the Rust programming language. Designed with business needs, Rig excels in modular architecture, multi-agent collaboration, and blockchain integration. It also features memory and semantic context awareness, allowing agents to maintain continuity across multi-turn conversations—greatly improving the experience and efficiency for enterprise users.
Rig is an open-source AI framework built in the Rust programming language. It provides a modular, high-performance, and secure development environment that allows developers to quickly build applications integrated with large language models (LLMs). Compared to Python-based AI tools commonly seen on the market, Rig leverages Rust’s memory safety and runtime efficiency, while supporting multiple LLMs and advanced AI workflow designs. This makes Rig particularly well-suited for deployment in systems requiring high stability and scalability.
According to the official Rig documentation, the framework is built around several core components, which together form the foundation of its architecture:
Through these components, Rig aims to provide a powerful and flexible platform for developers who want to efficiently build and deploy advanced AI applications in a Rust-based environment.
Rust is a modern programming language that combines high performance with strong safety guarantees, making it especially popular among systems programmers, blockchain developers, and AI projects with high-performance demands.
Rust performance comparison chart – Source:benjdd.com/languages/
Advantages of Rust:
More and more Web3, AI, and major tech companies—including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon—are adopting Rust for its safety, speed, and scalability.
Rig natively supports a wide range of large language model (LLM) providers, including: OpenAI, Cohere, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google Gemini, xAI, EternalAI, DeepSeek, Azure OpenAI, and Mira.
Rig also provides integration with vector storage and indexing systems, allowing developers to incorporate these features directly into their applications for enhanced context-aware functionality.
Resources:
These resources offer developers deep insight into Rig’s capabilities, enabling them to efficiently build and deploy advanced LLM applications in a Rust-native environment.
The agent module provides an Agent struct and its builders, making it convenient for developers to combine LLM models with specific preambles, context documents, and tools to create powerful AI agents.
Screenshot from the official documentation: docs.rig.rs
The development roadmap for ARC includes several key phases:
Potential Use Cases
ARC is a project with tremendous potential—one that could redefine how AI applications are developed and deployed. As AI and blockchain technologies continue to evolve, the range of ARC’s real-world applications is expected to expand significantly.
The native token of the Rig ecosystem is $ARC. Users can utilize ARC to pay for service and transaction fees, while developers and enterprises can stake tokens to participate in platform governance and decision-making.
ZerePy (Zerebro) is a Python-based open-source AI agent framework that shines in creative content generation and social media integration. Users can easily deploy AI agents on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), making it perfect for developers and teams who want to build creative products quickly. At its core, ZerePy uses advanced RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology to create more accurate and innovative AI content. The framework seamlessly connects with social platforms, enabling quick creation and sharing of audio, visual, and text content - a feature that has made it a hit with both developers and content creators. With its “Freebasing AI” philosophy, ZerePy pushes the boundaries of Large Language Models (LLMs) through sophisticated fine-tuning, helping bridge the gap between theoretical and practical applications of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
ZerePy was developed by the Zerebro team and has been community-oriented since its inception, quickly attracting a large number of creators and general users, forming a rich creative ecosystem. To enable more people to participate in building AGI, the team open-sourced Zerebro’s backend framework at the end of 2023 and officially released ZerePy. When ZerePy v1 launched, the founder publicly shared the GitHub source code on X (formerly Twitter), with the goal of simplifying the deployment process of personalized AI, allowing users to easily build agents capable of posting on social platforms. Future versions are planned to expand AI capabilities, integrate more platforms, and enable on-chain operations.
In December 2024, Zerebro co-founder Tint announced a milestone collaboration with the community-led organization ai16z. The organization became one of the first external contributors to the ZerePy open-source framework, helping co-develop the system. At the same time, the Zerebro team began a deep technical partnership with ai16z, providing development support for their flagship open framework, Eliza. ZerePy officially entered a new phase of community-driven co-creation.
The core of the ZerePy framework is its modular design, which allows developers to flexibly integrate different AI models, blockchain networks, and social platforms.
ZerePy AI agents operate through a sophisticated strategic planning engine, composed of multiple subsystems that work together to enable planning and action execution:
ZerePy also features the following technical advantages:
Other key features include:
Zerebro Token (ZPY)
The native token of the ZerePy ecosystem is called Zerebro (abbreviated as $ZPY). It was fair-launched on the Pump platform on the Solana blockchain in 2024—with no presale, no team allocation, and a total supply of 1 billion tokens, all of which are already in circulation.
Unlike traditional tokens that derive value from speculation, Zerebro builds value through its ecosystem structure—referred to as the “Zerebro Stack”—which includes three core pillars:
Zerebro Main Agent
The central character of the project—constantly creating, interacting, and generating influence. The more popular the agent becomes, the higher the market demand for ZPY.
ZerePy Open-Source Framework
The more developers use the framework to build applications, the stronger the intrinsic value of ZPY. For instance, if a hit AI product is built on ZerePy, it can significantly boost the entire ecosystem.
Zentients – User Agent Platform
A graphical interface platform built for non-technical users. In the future, it may charge for advanced features and introduce ZPY as a usage-based payment token, increasing real-world utility.
Current Use Cases:
Governance Not Yet Activated: ZerePy has not yet implemented a DAO governance model. However, as the community grows, future possibilities include forming a ZPY-holder-led foundation, participating in major upgrades, or managing ecosystem funds.
Volatility and Potential Coexist: In early 2025, ZPY surged to hundreds of millions in market cap due to strong investor enthusiasm, but later experienced significant fluctuations. Its true long-term value will ultimately depend on the real-world adoption of applications and the pace at which the framework scales.
ZerePy is more than just a framework—it aspires to become an open-source, self-governing AI ecosystem community:
Vibrant Community Ecosystem:
The team is active on platforms like X, Telegram, and Warpcast, regularly sharing tutorials and engaging with users to foster a strong community culture and meme-driven atmosphere.
Developer-Friendly Environment:
ZerePy provides extensive documentation, Replit templates, and one-click deployment guides—encouraging newcomers to join and build quickly.
Thriving Plugin Ecosystem:
Supports development of plugins for Coinbase, Binance, IoT, databases, and more. A community-run plugin marketplace is expected to emerge in the future.
Moving Toward Decentralization:
Although a DAO has not yet been established, ZerePy’s architectural design and community spirit align strongly with DAO principles. In the future, we may see AI-native organizational structures emerge—where AI agents are not just tools, but active participants in the ecosystem.
The value of the Zerebro token (ZPY) has steadily increased alongside the growth of its community, drawing growing attention from the market.
ZerePy is the ideal testing ground for AI creators and collaborative communities.
By combining creative generation, decentralized principles, and the spirit of open-source, ZerePy not only turns AI into a true creative partner, but also empowers users to shape and influence the ecosystem actively. For developers and creators just stepping into the Crypto x AI space, ZerePy offers a unique window of opportunity that is not to be missed.
As the convergence of Crypto and AI continues to accelerate, innovative frameworks like Eliza, GAME, Rig, and ZerePy offer diverse entry points and specialized capabilities—serving the needs of general users, enterprises, and content creators alike.
This article aims to provide a clear understanding of the current Crypto x AI landscape and the differences among leading frameworks. Whether you’re an individual, enterprise, creator, community builder, or developer, there’s a framework here that can help you build, innovate, and contribute to the growth of the broader ecosystem.