It has been more than 4 months since the last time we took a look at AI projects. The AI narrative, which was originally in good momentum, has been hit hard by Trump's Meme's bloodsucking, deepseek's emergence, tariffs and so on. The liquidity on the chain has gradually been lacking, and a series of "unexpected" have caused the AI bubble to burst early.
After reviewing those projects last year, I have been following up on basically all projects. It is obvious that some have gradually died, some are still telling stories, some are continuing to do things, and new things are constantly coming; some have unexpected rebounds because of the arrival of "school".
On April 6, the MCP project Dark was launched;
On April 17, the Virtuals launch pad Genesis was launched;
On April 20, ai16z launch platform auto.fun was launched.
Is there a second wave of AI? My answer is yes. Is AI the same thing as before? My answer is no.
After several months of bubble burst, can AI rebuild its ruins? When we come to the second half, how do we play AI? Here is my opinion.
This year we have seen too many Launchpads. Four.Meme broke out at the beginning of the year, and myshell's AI Launchpad was launched; and to Launchlab a while ago, except for these Launchpads, they are all working on their own Launchpads in different ecology.
Meme Launchpad's competition is essentially a competition of Eco+ Creators. The ecosystem determines that each public chain can have its own Meme Launchpad, and at the same time, there is almost only one Meme Launchpad that can become a winner-takes-all role.
The competition for creators includes:
1- A better distribution model for token issuers
2- Attract creative (sighted) people who are willing to issue tokens on your platform
The "$TIME" known as the Launchlab faucet has a maximum of 9M, and there is no Meme that can be found. News is posted every day. Pump.fun only has one or two tokens successfully graduated in a day, and there is not even one on other platforms.
One loss will be damaged. But most of the above are Launchpads that focus on "Meme", and what is important is angle and continuous communication. Meme does not have Utility, and AI Agent Whether you want it or not, you must have Utility to be ashamed.
So you will see that AI projects will be launched on some AI Launchpads alone, because Meme Launchpad is not suitable for AI Agents.
According to incomplete statistics, compared with Meme Launchpad, there are at least 5-10 AI Launchpads.
· Meme Launchpad: Pumpfun, Launchlab, FourMeme, Clanker, Apeswin, etc.;
· AI Launchpad: autofun, Virtual Genesis, Creatorbid, Arc Ryzome, Myshell, Spectral, etc.
In addition to creating tokens by users themselves, AI Launchpad also chooses to directly cooperate with AI projects that already have certain AI projects. Virtuals Genesis has 7 projects waiting to be launched, and 13 projects on autofun have announced cooperation and launch. Arc, which was previously popular, also announced its AI AppStore plan. If you believe in AI, you should also focus on more new projects on AI Launchpad, which will each account for half of the market.
The two most representative projects in the last cycle, Virtuals & AI16Z, are also the project representatives who follow up this round of follow-up.
Virtuals, as a representative of Agent, the previous token economics was an important reason for the rise of tokens. As the hottest project in the last round, AI16Z is the most criticized for its token practicality. After a few months, both projects have changed significantly. In my opinion, their actions are more focused on the role of tokens in the "ecology", not just the project itself.
VPN: Virtuals Partners Network, a program designed to reshape the intersection of AI and cryptocurrencies. VPN connects investors, field experts, scholars and developers to jointly explore, support and scale the development of the best AI agent founders in the field of encryption.
· ACP: Agent Commerce Protocol, aims to build a business ecosystem composed of AI agents. This protocol will allow autonomous interaction, collaboration and transactions between AI agents to form the so-called "Virtuals Nation", which precedes the Agent2Agent concept launched later by Google.
· Points: Points, also a proof of loyalty, hold $VIRTUAL token can earn points, and the points will be used to participate in the Launchpad.
· Genesis: The new launch mechanism launched by Virtuals Protocol, the main features include: points-based access, new distribution methods on-chain (determinism, transparency, fairness), and money-back guarantee (purpose to protect contributors).
ElizaOS V2: New upgraded AI framework, because V1 contributors and plugins are numerous, making new developers less efficient when using their frameworks, so new functional and structural optimizations will be updated in the near future, including swarms, agent interactions, etc.
· AUTOFUN: New AI launch platform, new fairer and long-term bonding curve, custom CA addresses, AI Token verification chat mechanisms, community content creation tools, etc.
· AI16Z New Economic Model: There is no detailed official announcement material yet. According to the team, the profit of the launch pad will be used for buyback. The purchased ai16z will instead supplement its liquidity pool for launching tokens, which is similar to virtuals.
· Spartan V2: $degenai will be upgraded and launched with ElizaOS V2, and will also be a project that shines autofun as an important part.
Whether it is functions or tokens, the two former top projects have not stopped empowering the ecosystem, and posted two screenshots:
Recently, the AI track has been ignited again because of the MCP concept, and some friends have also begun to "pick up garbage" in old projects and pay attention to the ecological opportunities of these old projects. In addition to DARK, SkyAI, which has been popular in the past two days, is also an MCP concept, and the previous coins: $DIGIMON, $AVA, $ARC, etc. are also moving in this direction.
As long as AI continues to develop, more new concepts will emerge. As long as you don't go to the poker table, there will be a chance this year
