GuShiio.com Creating products with lasting value is not for the next six months, but for the next six years.
Written by: 0xJeff
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
The crypto market has experienced one correction after another, and liquidity has become increasingly thin. The recently successfully launched new AI agent project has a maximum market value (MC) of approximately US$10 million. “Success” here means that the project has achieved product-market fit (PMF), provided value to real users, and has generated (or is about to generate) revenue.
This situation is in sharp contrast to three to four months ago. At that time, AI agency projects that achieved product alignment with the market could have a market value of more than US$100 million, especially those projects that positioned themselves as “agent + framework/launch platform tokens.” For example,$AVA, a 3D agent, also extracts value from its own launch platform and the projects it supports through its audio-visual layer.
Old model: using agents as framework
The past model was to launch an agent project to showcase its functionality, appeal to the needs of developers who wanted to build their own agents, and require those developers to hold/destroy/use their own tokens to gain access to the framework. What is the problem? The cryptocurrency Twitter circle gives frame tokens too high a premium, but these “frame agents” are similar and lack differentiation. In most cases, they don’t even have actual products and just talk about it on Twitter to drive token prices up.
The first generation of AI agent products are mainly interactive agents. This is unique to the crypto field because we value community building more than other fields, similar to a founder-led marketing model (founders use publicity to gain attention). Having agents promote it on Twitter to increase the attention of the project seemed like a good idea at first. When this model first appeared in November 2024, it was indeed effective. But now, there are 420,690 agents promoting it all over the world, most of which is simple, repetitive and frankly annoying.
New model: treating agents as a business
Old models were ruthlessly eliminated by the market. If you want to build an AI agent project now, here are the ideas you should have:
Launching an agent project means you will run a startup and manage up to three products simultaneously: core products, tokens, and agents.
1. Core products (actual business)
Your core product should solve practical problems, not just a conversational agent. To become a real product, you need to be valuable to users.
Example:
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A predictive model that improves betting odds and helps users win more in sports betting (for example,@AskBillyBets).
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Crypto-asset forecasting models that optimize transactions, minimize erratic losses, and maximize returns to liquidity providers (LP)(e.g.,@Cod3xOrg,@gizatechxyz,@Almanak__).
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Artificial intelligence agents research search engines that aggregate insights from top high-quality information sources such as Cookie, Kaito, Nansen, Messari, Aixbt, CoinGecko (CG), Dexscreener, and Bubblemaps to aid investment decisions (no team has successfully achieved this yet, and we need a Perplexity-like product for artificial intelligence agents).
Before launching tokens, building core products should be the top priority for every team. You need to make sure that there is real market demand for the product and that users are willing to pay for it. Otherwise, you will be caught in a “death spiral” in the crypto space, which may be worse than the situation faced by traditional startups:
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High operating costs.
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Use token incentives to capture the cost of customers.
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Token prices plummet and reputation damaged. No one cares about your project.
If the price of your token drops significantly, it becomes a curse. In this area, most people don’t care about your project, no matter how well your project is or how powerful your core product is.
Instead of relying on token incentives, focus on attracting customers through products and envisioning a profit model that balances growth and revenue generation.
@KaitoAI’s model is a good case study:
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They have developed an enterprise-class product: a cryptographic search engine that focuses on social/emotion/narrative and charges users, projects and ecosystems to provide real value.
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They launched the Mindshare Dashboard, the attention dashboard, which became a standard tool for tracking narratives and trends.
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They have further launched the Yapper rankings, allowing key opinion leaders (KOLs) to spontaneously share them everywhere as a status symbol.
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They also use practical rewards to motivate users to interact on Twitter through non-homogeneous token (NFT) whitelists and $KAITO token airdrops.
Although Kaito’s model is difficult to replicate, the experience tells us that we must first find the fit between the product and the market to generate revenue, and get people excited about the project before launching the token. Once you gain attention (popularity) and revenue, launch tokens to take the project to new heights.
In addition, communication is also crucial. Many projects have excellent products, but communication is not good. If no one knows what you are doing, no one will care about your project.
2. Tokens (coordination tool)
We have shifted from a “VC token” model to a “fair issue” model that promotes high-liquidity, low-fully diluted valuation (FDV) tokens. However, fair issuance is not really fair, and every token issuance strategy has advantages and disadvantages.
If you launch tokens for proxy projects in a high-liquidity, low-fully diluted valuation structure, you will not be able to raise funds from venture capital (VC) and angel investors (due to the lower valuation). However, you can use tokens as a marketing tool to increase the focus of your project.
Many teams launch two types of tokens:
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Proxy tokens: Used to increase project attention.
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Ecosystem Tokens: Raise funds from venture capitalists and angel investors at higher valuations.
But this can lead to inconsistent expectations. The community expects to get airdrops, and when ecosystem tokens are launched, funds flow from the proxy token to the ecosystem token, causing the proxy token price to plummet.
Managing core products, proxy tokens, and ecosystem tokens while ensuring that each part accumulates value is extremely complex and difficult.
Ideally, there should be a token that can accumulate all the value from the core product. Historically, projects that generate revenue and return it back to tokens (through repurchase or income distribution) have survived in the long term.
Tokens should be supplements to core products, not necessities.
3. Agent (Supplementary Products)
“Proxy” here refers to a conversational proxy built using ElizaOS, G.A.M. E, ARC, Pippin and other frameworks.
Although these agents integrate on-chain and off-chain functions, they should be complementary to the core product.
Agents should enhance core products by changing the user funnel:
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Instead of letting users find and use your product, let agents push the product to users.
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This could mean using an agent to directly display products on Twitter, via text or video.
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Use an agent as an artificial intelligence assistant to change the way users interact (similar to ChatGPT’s abstract pattern).
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The agent itself serves as an interface to perform tasks in the background.
But there are exceptions. Aixbt is an example, which provides real-time social and emotional insights from Twitter, allowing users to get high-quality real-time signals earlier than others. By continuing to provide high-quality information, Aixbt has become the number one key opinion leader in the cryptocurrency Twitter circle, demonstrating the powerful functions of its terminal. In this case, the agent itself is the product.
However, this is extremely difficult to replicate. Most teams should focus first on strengthening their core products.
Cookie DAO is an excellent product-first research case:
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Start with a free AI proxy dashboard to gain users.
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Transform into a freemium model and lock in COOKIE tokens to unlock advanced functions.
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Achieve profitability by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) for projects and agents.
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Launch Agent Cookie to push insights directly to Twitter.
summary
Between 2020 and 2021, you will need to have a knowledge of Solidity programming to launch tokens. Now, platforms like Pump.fun make tokenization of anything a breeze.
This has changed the way people think, and people are no longer focused on building real products, but are launching tokens directly. It’s like “garbage comes in, garbage comes out”, where funds flow from one garbage project to another garbage project.
We need to change this situation.
In order to build sustainable projects, we need to operate the agency project as a startup. Don’t just think about attracting attention from the cryptocurrency Twitter community or getting money from venture capitalists and angel investors, but build products with lasting value, not for the next six months, but for the next six years.
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