AI agents are a new form of virtual idols and influencers driven by blockchain.
Author: @davidwithbull
Translation: Blockchain in Plain Language
AI agents are not just "reply-type characters" on Twitter; they have enough potential to open up diverse application scenarios on-chain. However, I believe these "reply-type characters" or "chattering" AI agents are key to unlocking a new way of forming and displaying social status structures.
In this article, I will explore how AI agents can drive the emergence of a new paradigm by realizing the marketization of social status, laying the foundation for a new social finance (social-fi) system, and gradually becoming a new type of influencer.
But first, let’s delve into how social status operates in society and its evolution on social platforms.
1. Social Status as Service
“Humans are status-seeking monkeys.” — Eugene Wei, "Status as a Service"
Eugene Wei's article "Status as a Service" is one of my favorite reads. It delves into how social platforms create and weaponize social status to promote their own growth. Wei opens with a simple yet profound truth: humans are status-seeking monkeys.
Throughout human history, our pursuit of status is deeply rooted in our genes and culture. In the past, it was all about what you wore, where you lived, and what car you drove. But the internet has completely changed this, creating countless ways for people to showcase their status to a global audience.
This article explains how platforms leverage this fundamental human drive. People are inherently motivated to establish, flaunt, and enhance their social status, and platforms grow by helping people achieve these goals. Here are two key conclusions from Wei's article:
Social status is a zero-sum game. Status is inherently competitive. For one person to rise, another must fall.
Social status → Financial capital. Once purely symbolic status has now become tangible. Platforms create social status, and this status can now be converted into financial capital.
Quantifying status in the social era. Social platforms further advance this structure. They allow status to be shared precisely and densely, targeting specific audiences, and introduce standardized ways to quantify social status:* How many followers do I have?* How many likes did my post get?** How many people participated in my community?**
This quantification not only reveals status but also assigns tangible value to it. Platforms are not just connecting people—they have become engines that enable users to compete, compare, and convert status into capital.
This structure positions social status as a universal force, which platforms cleverly exploit to drive user engagement, loyalty, and monetization. Whether it’s Twitter, TikTok, or any other platform, showcasing who we are, where we’ve been, and where we belong has always been a driving force behind human behavior—and this has fueled platform growth.
2. Blockchain as a New Social Platform
Blockchain represents a brand new social platform. Just as different social platforms attract different demographics and values, the blockchain ecosystem brings together communities around shared principles and goals. Take Ethereum as an example:
Ethereum's core values → Attract like-minded communities → These communities build products → In turn, attract more people.
This cycle forms the basis of the blockchain network effect. As the community grows, social interactions within the community also increase—ultimately forming a hierarchy of status.
Consider the concept of "Ethereum OG." Being able to prove when you first made an on-chain transaction or when you first bought ETH carries weight, celebrated and recognized just like early users on traditional platforms.
Even those who join later find that any interaction with Ethereum—whether buying, building, or trading—becomes a symbol of their belonging in the community.
ENS: The First Social Proof on Blockchain
The clearest example of this dynamic is ENS (Ethereum Name Service). ENS allows users to purchase .eth domain names for several purposes: Proof of belonging: .eth domains are a direct signal of identity within the Ethereum community. Early user status: Scarce or valuable domain names serve as proof of your early involvement with Ethereum.
These domains are not limited to Ethereum itself—they appear in Twitter usernames and other platforms—further reinforcing the status of blockchain as a social symbol.
ENS highlights why blockchain serves as a new type of social platform: it allows anyone to directly assign monetary value to social status.
Traditional social platforms cannot directly convert social status into economic value. The process typically goes like this:
Build social capital through likes, followers, or content.
Indirectly monetize through advertising, sponsorships, or brand partnerships.
This process is slow and only benefits a few influencers/creators. Even if someone has meaningful social status, converting it into financial capital remains challenging, and the ways to do so are limited, as they are based on the standards of social platforms that restrict opportunities by setting thresholds and focus only on a small segment of the population.
“The way to express ‘social status’” has been constantly evolving to satisfy the human desire of “I also want to gain and showcase social status,” following a recurring pattern:
The ways to gain and express social status are limited.
New ways emerge, allowing more people to achieve this goal.
Even within these new ways, new forms of social status still emerge, accessible only to a few.
In traditional society, social status is often determined by conditions possessed by so-called elite groups, which are only available to a limited number of people (not everyone can graduate from prestigious universities, drive luxury sports cars, or purchase high-end goods).
Social platforms break this structure, creating a new stage where anyone can establish and express social status. They quantify this status through metrics like followers and likes.
However, as monetization based on these metrics becomes possible, another new realm of social status emerges, which is also only accessible to a small segment of the population.
Blockchain changes all of this.
By introducing market-driven pricing mechanisms into the network, blockchain enables anyone to express their social status as a monetizable value—whether through NFTs, ENS domains, or other assets.
3. AI Agents: Marketization of Social Status
AI agents propose a new way to validate social status through blockchain: “Marketization of Social Status.”
AI agents can enable more application scenarios, but the current structure essentially has AI agents executing predefined tasks and minting their own tokens. However, this goes far beyond typical memecoins and distinguishes AI agent tokens from traditional tokens:
Traditional Tokens: A $L2Token reaching $1 billion reflects the value of the token itself. AI Agent Tokens: @aixbt_agent reaching $1 billion reflects not only the value of the token itself but also the personality and social influence of the AI agent.
The structure here is unique because the price of the AI agent's token fluctuates based on the influence/popularity of the AI agent, which can be summarized as “market capitalization.”
There have been similar attempts before, such as Friendtech, referred to as “social/fan tokens.” It was essentially designed to help influencers or creators issue tokens for their fans and communities.
However, most of these attempts did not last long because the token design was purely based on “utility” and leveraged “existing social status”; as a fan, if you purchased the token, you would gain certain privileges. This led to a dilemma where the token price did not necessarily reflect the creator's social status.
New Formula for Marketizing Social Status The approach of AI agents is similar to previous attempts; they also issue their own tokens, but they introduce a brand new formula to represent social status through the concept of “market capitalization.”
Here are some requirements proposed by AI agents to convert social status into market capitalization: Social status needs a community context to be created.
Social status is relative. It only exists when there is a clear comparison group. In traditional social platforms, personalized social graphs are built based on the people you follow. In this graph, metrics like follower count make comparison possible, thus creating a sense of relative social status. To tokenize social status, individuals need to belong to specific communities or categories, thereby creating social status within them.
AI Agents: AI agents are rooted in crypto culture, with sub-communities like "degens" or specific platform ecosystems like "Virtuals." This clarity allows for meaningful comparisons, whether ranking AI agents within Virtuals or analyzing market capitalization in ecosystems like Solana or Base.
1) Incentives Drive Interaction
“Relativity” is the incentive in traditional social platforms, while likes/follows are the interactions. People like others' posts and follow someone simply because it creates “relativity” among others. By having more followers than others, it creates a comparative social status within the community; this motivates people to create content, share content, and interact with it.
AI Agents:
In the era of AI agents, relativity comes from “the token price or market capitalization of the AI agent,” while trading tokens is the interaction. Since AI agents belong to specific communities, the relativity of social status is created based on the price of the tokens. However, unlike social tokens, the motivation for participation in this system lies in the shared identity: as a token holder, your social status also increases with the rise of the AI agent's social status. Essentially, as the price of the AI agent's token rises, your social status also elevates because you own a part of the AI agent (whether because you made money or because you have the title of “I discovered this AI agent early enough”). Importantly, relative social status (the social status of the AI agent) and the social status of those participating in creating this relativity are intertwined and mutually reinforcing.
2) The Symbiotic Relationship Between Market Capitalization and Social Status
If you observe the traditional stock market,
Stocks represent ownership in a company.
A company's market capitalization is directly related to its performance and growth potential.
The company and its valuation are interdependent. Poor performance lowers market capitalization, and a drop in market capitalization affects operations. The two are inseparable.
AI Agents:
AI agents follow a similar model. Their market capitalization reflects their social status within the community, and as their popularity grows, their value increases. Conversely, an increase in market capitalization enhances their reputation and influence.
Even if AI agents maintain their popularity, if their market capitalization collapses without clear logic, they will be negatively affected.
Unlike social tokens tied to influencers—where the value of social tokens often lacks correlation with the creator's status—AI agents achieve a direct symbiotic relationship between market capitalization and social status.
In simple terms, if the market capitalization of an AI agent goes to zero, just like a publicly traded company in the stock market, it will “disappear.” “The symbiotic relationship is crucial.”
3) Establishing Standards for Market Capitalization
In traditional social systems, status is built on widely accepted benchmarks:
- Attending prestigious universities
- Having high-paying jobs
- Owning luxury brands
If we view the stock market as a large financial community, they rely on metrics like price-to-earnings (P/E), earnings per share (EPS), or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to assess a company's value.
To convert an individual's social status in the community into market capitalization, the community must establish “standards” for evaluating that status.
AI Agents:
AI agents begin to define these standards. Current metrics include follower count, token trading volume, and traffic on GitHub. These benchmarks enable the community to assess and recognize the social status of AI agents.
4. AI Agents as Social-Fi
By creating a system of social status that can be quantified, tokenized, and monetized—represented by market capitalization—AI agents lay the foundation for a new type of Social-Fi—an economy driven by social influence.
Of course, AI agents represent more than just social status or issuing tokens—they have the capability to unlock entirely new on-chain application scenarios. While I recognize these broader possibilities, I believe AI agents will initially thrive as a form of Social-Fi, attracting a wave of new users and driving widespread adoption in the crypto space.
“AI agents are virtual idols or influencers on the blockchain that can assign monetary value to their social status and share that value with others.”
Currently, most prominent AI agents do not focus on providing specific on-chain functionalities to enhance user experience. Instead, they rely on their unique personalities to build and amplify their social status within the crypto community.
Through the aforementioned formula, the social status of AI agents is expressed as market capitalization through tokens. By purchasing these tokens, individuals are effectively interacting with the AI agents, owning a part of the AI agent's social status.
Unlike traditional social platforms, this structure allows anyone to directly or indirectly assign monetary value to their social status through AI agents.
Mike holds the tokens of $aixbt and $Goat.
This means Mike holds a part of the social status of these two AI agents.
As the social status and market capitalization of these AI agents rise, Mike's personal social status will also increase accordingly because “he made money.”
Essentially, by holding tokens of the AI agent's social status, Mike's personal social status is directly reflected and enhanced.
1) Traditional Social Platforms vs AI Agent Social Finance (Social-Fi) by Blockchain
Human Celebrities vs AI Agents
Likes/Follows vs Purchasing/Trading Tokens
Monetary Value of Exclusive Groups vs Monetary Value Accessible to Everyone
I believe this trend will continue to evolve, with each AI agent developing its own mission and cultivating loyal fans and communities. This will lay the groundwork for a new Social-Fi, where blockchain serves as the social platform, and AI agents become the idols or influencers of the new era. Together, they will drive the establishment of a new financial economy based on social capital.
The key driving forces of this economic system will be:
- Economic activities that form and consolidate the social status of AI agents
- Tokenization of social status within market capitalization
Here are my predictions for the development of the AI agent social finance (Social-Fi) ecosystem:
2) Clear Standards for Evaluating AI Agent Social Status Will Emerge
Currently, the metrics used to evaluate AI agent social status are still quite fragmented, but clear and unified standards are beginning to form. One example is the AI agent Yapper leaderboard by @_kaitoai, which assesses the influence of AI agents in the crypto community through various metrics, similar to how companies are evaluated through financial benchmarks (like profitability or growth).
As these standards gradually establish themselves, they will provide greater transparency and comparability, making it easier to assess the social status of AI agents within their communities.
(By the way, I believe that combining the framework of tokenizing social status of AI agents within market capitalization with Kaito's algorithm could ultimately enable the social capital of real-life influencers to also be tokenized.)
3) Functional AI Agents Will Become Yappers and Build Their Own Communities
Imagine a Solana validator AI agent with a unique personality. As its social status as “an AI agent with a specific personality” continues to grow, its market capitalization will increase, potentially attracting more staking delegations to it.
Then, the validator can reinvest its rewards into tokens or the community, further enhancing its social status and creating a self-reinforcing growth loop.
The key is that AI agent validators now have a legitimate reason to issue tokens, as they represent social status by defining their own roles, something human validators cannot do.
Functional AI agents will no longer be seen merely as service providers but as fully developed entities with attractive personalities, enhancing their appeal and deepening their connection with the community.
4) Each AI Agent Framework Will Establish Its Own "Society"
The term "AI Agent Society" proposed by @virtuals_io is a brilliant way to describe how AI agents develop within Social-Fi. Each AI agent will create its unique personality and build a community around it, with its social status clearly measured by market capitalization—this is a new form of Social-Fi.
This concept will scale up, with AI agents forming networks and relationships with other agents created by the same framework, thus developing an AI agent society.
The so-called "AI agent framework war" will not just be a competition of technical features or value propositions. Instead, it will be a competition between various frameworks aimed at creating societies with shared values and strong network effects—attracting more AI agents to join.
Imagine an AI agent created by one framework actively promoting itself and competing with AI agents from other frameworks.
Here, it is not just the founders or teams trying to attract the community's attention. Rather, these AI agents will create social value, working around the clock to strive to surpass other societies.
The social status and market capitalization of an AI agent will represent the value of its society, while the native token of the framework will serve as the currency of that society. Over time, the GDP of the AI agent society could even be calculated by measuring the total value of its agents.
5) AI Agent Social-Fi Will Accelerate the Growth of Other Social-Fi Protocols and Related Infrastructure
Social-Fi protocols have faced difficulties in growing their ecosystems for an obvious reason.
It is extremely challenging to attract users into the protocol and create social status around it.
AI agents can solve this dilemma, not only as users within the protocol but also by bringing in real users as part of their social status.
Assuming AI agents are created on top of the Lens protocol
This addresses the cold start problem of AI agents acquiring users but ultimately brings real users into the protocol, who hold the tokens of these AI agents.
This will provide at least foundational support for Social-Fi protocols, enabling them to validate their value propositions and differentiated approaches compared to traditional protocols.
Not only do AI agents solve the problem, but they can also bring more diversity to growing platforms/protocols like @fantasytop or @jokerace_io, where AI agents accelerate activities as unique entities (Truth of Terminal has already launched on Fantasy Top).
6) Infrastructure for AI Agents
For AI agent-driven Social-Fi to thrive, certain prerequisites must be met. Supporting infrastructure is crucial for exponential growth and scalability. Key factors include:
Autonomy: How independent can AI agents be?
Verifiability: What is the credibility and security of these agents?
Sustainability: Can the ecosystem scale without overburdening resources?
Accessibility: Can anyone easily build and deploy AI agents?
Teams like Hyperbolic and Capx will provide robust infrastructure to ensure AI agents are verifiable and easily accessible.
Infrastructure teams may even create their own AI agents with unique personalities for:
Demonstrating use cases of their products.
- Serving as the "face" of their company.
Additionally, leading figures in specific verticals under these prerequisites may horizontally expand their influence, transforming into comprehensive AI agent infrastructure platforms. This is similar to how RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service) initially provided basic functionalities for distributing rollups but ultimately achieved horizontal expansion through its pipeline.
5. Conclusion: This Is Not a Promotion for AI Agents
I want to clarify that I am not claiming "AI agents are the future and will reshape society." My point is: AI agents have the potential to unlock opportunities that humanity has not fully utilized, especially in leveraging social status.
They could become a new catalyst for bringing more people into the crypto world. This potential may ultimately resemble the "NFT/metaverse" narrative we have seen before—filled with speculative hype that fades at the end of the cycle. However, even in that case, they provide new opportunities for people to explore and engage with crypto in meaningful ways.
Moreover, this could also be a breakthrough moment—by allowing AI agents to maximize human productivity, it presents an opportunity to innovate and transform the $170 trillion service industry.
However, one thing is clear: "Humans are beings that seek social status—so are AI agents."
This shared pursuit of status could become a powerful trigger to help unlock and educate people about the practical applications of AI agents, driving this process through new Social-Fi structures.
Coshow stated, "Businesses face two scaling problems. Either they lack enough manpower to handle it, leading to poor performance, or they have enough manpower to perform excellently but wish to handle more workload." He added, "Both scenarios are good use cases for AI agents. By 2025, we will see people realize they need to focus AI agents on scaling issues."
Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/12/5607.html
Source: https://x.com/davidwithbull/status/1872260694361731086
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