The combination of human and artificial intelligence has brought us an entirely new breed of virtual creatures: AI agents. When you add crypto into the mix, we go a step further with, you guessed it, crypto AI agents.
In this guide, we’ll turn to human intelligence and tell you whether AI agents are really the answer to all your crypto prayers (nope), what they do, what sets them apart from trading bots and how you can get started with them.
Crypto AI agents are AI-powered, partially or fully autonomous systems designed to make (or help make) decisions in the Web3 ecosystem.
They are designed to quickly make trading and/or management decisions, which might also include launching their own AI meme coin or any other crypto project.
The huge advantage of crypto AI agents lies in their autonomy, but as a note, is not always full autonomy.
Instead of wasting their intelligence on simply selling a token when its price drops below a certain threshold, these smart virtual machines can analyze a huge range of factors to make a more informed trading decision. Which, of course, is still not necessarily always correct as the crypto world works in mysterious and meme-generating ways.
Crypto AI agents use different machine learning (ML) models, including very large language models (LLMs) that power well-known projects like ChatGPT. These models help the agents gather information, analyze it and then make a decision.
AI agents also learn from the results of their decisions. This (the ability to learn and adapt) sets them apart from simple bots.
AI agents have lots of potential use cases within crypto, possibly even those we’re not aware of yet. With that said, it seems the common denominator of all of them is task automation, and one of the top tasks? Trading.
AI agents can use any and all previous trading data to influence their future decisions and then use the results from those trades to learn and adapt their behavior.
Another increasingly common use case for AI agents is as a new form of key opinion leaders (KOLs). Let’s just call them AKOLs–Artificial Key Opinion Leaders. People are fascinated by the ability to interact with AI Agents on social media. For example, an AI agent on Farcaster called Aether racked up 12,000 followers by interacting with users and bots on the platform, and even commissioned an original piece of physical art from a human artist!
While human KOLs can be biased, either consciously or unconsciously, or affiliated with brands behind the scenes, AI agents don’t have the same level of subjectivity.
Unless they’re steered towards a biased perspective, Agents can collect and use more diverse, verifiable data to make their decisions. Additionally, they never need rest, so they can cover more time zones and interact with people 24/7. I would need to up my caffeine intake to compete with that.
By this point, you’ve learned that AI crypto agents can make impressively complex decisions, so now let’s dive into their (equally complex, but simply explained) architecture that makes all of this possible.
This is where it starts.
In this layer, the agent receives the data it’s going to work with. It can connect to blockchain nodes, to different APIs depending on their data needs (including historical blockchain data, social media sentiment analysis and more) and to oracles that gather off-chain data.
Imagine this layer as a huge funnel or vortex that collects anything and everything the agent could possibly use. It’s better not to stand in its way.
This is where crazy amounts of collected data are turned into decisions.
Here, all the different machine learning models are used to determine the best possible course of action based on previous experience, be it from the agent itself or from what it learned from outside sources.
This is usually the most technologically complex layer.
Finally, a little bit of blockchain.
In this layer, the agent implements its decisions on a blockchain level. They’re usually integrated through an ABI (Application Binary Interface) to enable interaction with EVM-based smart contracts.
This is the layer where the agent will start and manage trades, manage portfolios and generally take action. While most agents today interact on a single blockchain, in the future it is possible these agents can use cross-chain swaps or cross-chain bridges to interact with tokens across blockchain ecosystems.
Although AI agents may sound similar to trading bots in the sense that they offer you a hands-free approach to trading, this is where their similarities end.
Most importantly, crypto AI agents are much more complex than common trading bots. It’s like your brand-new smartphone versus a vintage landline phone that fewer and fewer of us are old enough to remember.
In short, crypto AI agents are both autonomous and adaptive, whereas trading bots are neither. Sorry, bots.
With trading bots, you have to tweak their settings yourself if you notice something isn’t working out as you hoped. Typically AI agents can quickly do that by themselves. However, this means you don’t get the same hands-on approach that trading bots offer.
To sum it up: AI agents are highly complex and also able to make complex decisions by themselves. Trading bots are pretty rudimentary in that they can simplify trading for you, but you’ll still have to make every decision based on your previous experience and information. In addition, AI Agents typically utilize tokenomics to engage with the platform, creating some of the top AI coins in the process.
The crypto AI agent space is still growing, or, to be more precise, crypto AI agents are growing this space by themselves. With a little bit of help from humans, of course.
In either case, some agent leaders have already appeared in the lead, garnering the most attention. Let’s take a look at some of the top AI Agent coins.
Virtuals Protocol is built on Base, the Ethereum L2 developed by crypto exchange Coinbase, and lets users build and deploy their own AI agents. It’s even the basis for a couple of AI agents on our list. These agents are also tokenized, which means you can own a fraction of an agent.
Their engine is used to create autonomous AI agents that use social media to interact with users, manage their own on-chain wallets and generally interact within entertainment applications.
The ai16z project started out as a meme coin on Solana but quickly gained traction, leading the team to pivot towards different and, as they hope, more robust developments. Right now, they’re building a separate blockchain for AI agents, using the ElizaOS framework for AI agents to let you create your own agents for platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Discord. The project was recently rebranded to ElizaOS following a request from prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (commonly known as a16z).
AIXBT is a crypto market intelligence platform built using the Virtuals Protocol. The platform helps you track and interpret market trends, and also collects data from different sources, including KOLs from X, to give you market analysis and insights. AIXBT's token research has been used to swap tokens, identify which meme coins to buy, and understand utility projects like DeFi, Layer 2s, and DeFAI.
It’s even shown success in crypto predictions, although you should never rely on AI agents alone to make that sort of decision.
Griffain is a project that coordinates different crypto AI agents within one network, and also lets you create your own agent. The project is currently invite-only with no specific launch date set, and also requires purchasing an access pass to join. For now, it separates Personal Agents (built by users) from Special Agents (built by Griffain) but does use the two types together to get the best results.
Zerebro is another AI agent based on the Virtuals Protocol, but its focus is on creating content such as music, NFTs and memes. It calls itself a ‘cross-chain AI artist’ that uses interactions with people as inspiration for its creative process. It’s even released music on Spotify.
The possibilities of crypto AI agents may sound like a dream come true. But like any other projects, they have their share of pros and cons worth mentioning.
Magic Eden is the perfect starting point for buying, selling and discovering new AI agent tokens. The wallet app provides a great way to dip your toes into the world of crypto AI agents and find out which project might be for you.
Download the Magic Eden Wallet to find and trade the hottest crypto AI agents in the market.
AI agents use various machine-learning approaches to collect and analyze all data available to them so they can make trading decisions. They use the data collection layer to get access to this information, then the AI/ML layer to make the decisions and then finally the blockchain integration layer in order to execute their decisions on a blockchain level.
AI agents should be used for crypto trading with care, a lot of previous research and an understanding of the principles of the market and trading. They can be safe and very useful, but you should always invest a lot of time in finding the right agent for you, seeing how it works and never trusting it with more than you can afford to lose in a worst-case scenario.
Some of the most popular AI agents nowadays include AIXBT, Zerebro and ai16z, among others. They are geared towards different use cases, so they’re not all for trading; for example, Zerebro makes some very interesting art, including NFTs.
AI agents can be used in DeFi applications in order to automate tasks without human intervention. They can help with risk assessment, personalize their approach to users and automate complex tasks.
The information provided on this website is provided for general educational purposes only and is in no way financial or investment advice. Certain information may have also been provided to us or prepared by third parties; these materials are provided for convenience and are not an endorsement by Magic Eden. Magic Eden is not liable for any errors, changes or amendments to such information, including any actions taken in reliance on such information.
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