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 has been led by representative projects or events, demonstrating an evolution from pure concept speculation to gradual technological exploration.

01, First Wave (Early Exploration Phase)

Between 2018 and 2019, some projects attempted to combine blockchain and AI concepts, but the impact was very limited. The real first wave of excitement was triggered by the market response after the launch of ChatGPT in early 2023. OpenAI's ChatGPT became popular at the end of 2022, allowing the public to witness the power of AI entering the common civilian field, which feels somewhat similar to the explosion of the internet after personal computers began to be popularized over 20 years ago, and the craze for mobile internet products caused by the hot sales of smartphones a decade ago. The emergence of ChatGPT made ordinary users truly feel that it could enhance their work efficiency.

A major feature of the crypto space is that "anything hot can be speculated on," and thus ChatGPT has sparked limitless imagination in the Crypto market regarding the prospects of "AI + blockchain." Starting from January 2023, a number of early AI concept tokens saw their prices soar, kicking off the first wave of the market. 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. The price of FET token skyrocketed in January 2023 (with several times increase within a month), and its market value once exceeded 200 million dollars. During the same period, AI-related cryptocurrencies 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 are revived 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 implemented, and the price increases mainly came from market sentiment and the yearning for the major trend of AI.

02, Second Wave

If we define the continuous strengthening of BTC starting from the end of 2023 as the core theme of this "crypto bull market", then there are only two tracks that have stirred up a wave: one is the inscriptions and runes classified under the BTC ecosystem, which brought a lot of heat with innovative asset issuance; the other is the Meme track.

Some Meme projects have begun to incorporate AI concepts, and with the continued rise of generative AI, the Crypto community has started 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 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 gained popularity with its unique story of "AI creating the next great meme coin," and after listing on several mainstream exchanges, its price surged hundreds of times within just a few weeks, briefly entering the ranks of 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, Midjourney, etc., to generate coin names, images, or plots, launching various meme tokens with AI elements. On one hand, investors are inspired by the AI wave, while on the other hand, they are driven by a gambling mentality to flock to these high-risk tokens. However, in essence, these meme coins lack any AI technological content and are merely community games that hype the AI concept. For instance, TURBO itself does not have any practical application, and "AI-driven" is just a promotional gimmick, with its value mainly supported by community consensus and the psychology of speculation. The second wave of enthusiasm will gradually decline in the second half of 2024, and many AI meme coins will quickly return to zero, leading the market to cool down.

03, Third Wave

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 concept of AI Agents emerged, elevating hype from simple memes to automated agents with storylines. The iconic event driving this wave of enthusiasm was the explosive popularity of Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT).

$GOAT was initially launched on the Solana blockchain as a meme coin, but unlike previous ones, it is wrapped in a story of "AI Agent Genesis": an AI agent named "Truth GPT" (created by developer Andy Ayrey) aims to create a blockbuster meme coin and even caught the attention and sponsorship of well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (who personally provided $50,000 in startup funds to the AI). With such a storyline, GOAT ignited market sentiment instantly after its launch—its price skyrocketed over 120 times on the first day (with a 24-hour increase of 12,000%), reaching a high of about $0.4664 within a few 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 conceive a story of a "self-sufficient AI" leading a project, giving the token a sci-fi-like hype. For example, it claims that the AI agent autonomously manages funds and executes tasks without human intervention, thus endowing the token with a sense of mystery and futurism. During this period, besides GOAT, other concepts related to AI agents have also emerged, such as TruthGPT and various AI trading Agent DAOs that claim to automate trading, with many experiencing a short-term price surge.

However, most projects remain in the narrative stage, meaning they can only tell stories. The so-called AI agents are often just scripts with preset logic, far from true autonomous intelligent applications, let alone discussing whether the application effects are good or bad. This wave of enthusiasm peaked around January 2025 and then collapsed—external events (such as Trump's announcement in January 2025 to issue his personal Meme coin $TRUMP which siphoned off market funds) caused speculative hot money to withdraw, and the prices of coins like GOAT quickly plummeted. The entire AI Agent sector has fallen from the hot trend it was a few months ago into a valley.

04, Fourth Wave

After the previous waves of hype receded, a batch of AI projects that focus more on technology and ecological construction emerged at the end of 2024. Unlike earlier phases mainly driven by community speculation, this stage saw the rise of AI platform projects with notable backgrounds or serious visions. Typical examples include: ai16z and Virtuals, which are seen as representatives of a certain AI ecosystem (their names dramatically mimic well-known venture capital). The commonality among these projects is: to build 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 a name that alludes to a well-known venture capital firm. The project essentially positions itself as a decentralized AI smart trading fund based on Solana, referred to 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 sparked immediate market attention upon its launch: by the end of October 2024, its market value skyrocketed from zero to approximately 80 million USD in just one day, igniting speculation enthusiasm. Surprisingly, the founder of a certain venture capital firm even endorsed it on social media, personally sharing the concept introduction and link of AI16z. With the backing of notable 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 of 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 "AI Layer1" by December 2024: launching a Launchpad specifically serving AI agents, making the ai16z token the base currency for agent transactions and a medium for transaction fees, and designing node incentives and value buyback mechanisms, among others. At this stage, it can be seen that the project party is trying to shift from speculation to building a sustainable ecosystem, supporting the token value through technological 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 built an engaging narrative that attracted numerous 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 (FDV) of the leading projects within the Virtuals ecosystem once exceeded $5 billion, and the FDV of the tokens corresponding to the Eliza framework also reached about half of that, at the level of billions of dollars. Other notable projects, such as AIXBT, had peak market values reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. During this time, capital placed extremely high valuations on "AI agent platform/framework" projects. However, the actual user scale and revenue at that time lagged far behind the valuations— for example, although Virtuals claimed to be thriving, statistics showed that its actual daily revenue after launch was less than $500 at one point, creating a stark contrast with its sky-high valuation. As the overall market cooled in early 2025, the token values of these projects generally halved or even collapsed, demonstrating that having only grand visions and narratives cannot sustain prices.

Therefore, the representatives of the fourth wave have not yet truly become the "app store" for AI Agents. Instead, they are more like platforms that concentrate on AI Agent Memes. While everyone is waiting to see if they can break out and be reborn, the fifth wave has surged in.

05, Fifth Wave

After a brief downturn, the WEB3 AI sector is warming up again in early Q2 2025. The current hotspots have started to clearly demonstrate a "return to reality": there are focuses on new generation AI Agent real platforms and tools; there are new AI ecosystems specifically suitable for AI project operations; there are decentralized features utilizing user data for value storage; and there are even integrations of WEB3 AI with other high-tech fields such as robotics. All of these present a "hundred flowers blooming" scenario, and we look forward to the day when these practical projects can truly have a "hundred flowers blooming" moment. Below, we list some examples of 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, aiming to build a "Consumer-Level 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 fees and value return of AI Agents. The scenario depicted by Zerebro is that anyone can generate their own AI agent (such as an email assistant, programming assistant, trading bot, etc.) with one click on the platform and issue corresponding sub-tokens for the agents; the ZEREBRO token serves as a universal payment and governance tool for all agent services, realizing value accumulation. This model is seen as the 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 experiencing a prior adjustment, in April 2025, ZEREBRO surged 400% in just two days, attracting significant market attention. During the same period, other related projects also experienced explosive growth: for example, the $AIOS token, touted as the "Agent Operating System," rebounded tenfold, and the Crypto AI sector, which had been quiet for months, became active again. Investors' imaginations are shifting from a single AI Agent to 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 serve as a bridge connecting Web2 AI technology with Web3 value capture. Although Zerebro and others have planned rich functionalities, the actual products have not yet fully materialized during the frenzy stage, and many application scenarios remain in testing or demo.

Just in the past week, Zerebro once again exploded onto the market, but in a rather absurd way: Zerebro's co-founder Jeffy Yu posted a "suicide" video online, and then an obituary platform also released a related obituary, which was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. This led to the explosion of a new meme, the LLJEFFY token, which surged to over 100 million U before instantly dropping back to nearly zero. Some KOLs noticed that on-chain data showed Yu's associated wallet still had active funds after the reported death, leading them to conclude this was a new exit scam. If the "fake death event" is true, then Zerebro is probably just another meme being played more extravagantly; this kind of limitless operation is a disgrace to crypto.

Metis's AI chain Hyperion + LazAI

Metis is an established ETH Layer 2 project, and what most people probably remember most is that it is the only one