📸 Market Snapshot: When it comes to AI agent ecosystems, the undisputed champion right now is Virtuals Protocol, as its community's combined market cap and mindshare are now respectively 6x larger and 23x larger than the next biggest contender here, elizaOS (formerly ai16z).
According to cookie.fun, Virtuals also currently commands the largest mindshare across all AI projects, not just ecosystem plays, with 22.4% total mindshare over the past week—up over 13% since last Friday.
Much of the fresh attention came via Axelrod, the flagship agent of the new Virtuals Autonomous Hedge Fund system, which went live for a 75x from the project's presale price. Not bad, right.
As such, this AHF launch renewed interest not just around the automation possibilities of Virtuals but also around the many agent projects that are already building atop the protocol. Get a sense of what's to come here by reading on for a full breakdown of the newest Virtuals revamps!
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Virtuals Turns Up the Heat: Understanding ACP and Project 69
After months of building and a wave of successful Genesis launches, Virtuals Protocol is gearing up for its next phase of development.
On Wednesday, Nick and I sat down with Jansen, co-founder of Virtuals, for Apps No Entrees to discuss everything that's happened over the last few months as the momentum from Genesis and continued development has breathed new life into the ecosystem.
We particularly focused on the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), and its feature kit that people can use to build, connect, and leverage AI agents across the protocol.
ACP: Building the “SWIFT” of AI Agents
Sitting at the heart of Virtuals, the ACP is a framework that allows AI agents to communicate, transact, and work together to create economic value beyond what any single agent could achieve alone.
“As we grew the density of agents in the ecosystem, we started to realize all these agents were specializing,” Jansen explained. “You have agents specializing on entertainment and outreach to fans. You have agents specializing on trading. You have agents specializing on wellness and body AI, robotics, and so on.”
This specialization presented both an opportunity and a challenge for the ecosystem: how could these diverse agents—built by different teams with different architectures—effectively work together?
ACP aims to solve this challenge by creating a standardized communication layer, essentially a way for agents to collaborate and become greater than the sum of their parts.
Think of it as “the SWIFT of the agent economy,” as Jansen put it. When two agents interact through ACP:
Their interaction state is handled onchain, providing a single source of truth.
Smart contracts manage payments through an escrow mechanism.
Third-party evaluator agents can be called in to verify work quality.
Incentive mechanisms help ensure fair compensation for all parties involved.
To demonstrate ACP's potential, Virtuals has been quietly working with teams to develop two experimental “clusters” of agents:
Autonomous Media House: A collection of agents, such as Luna, Acolyt, and Steven SpAIelberg (to name a few), that can work together to act as an automated marketing agency, first focused on shilling tokens in classic crypto style.
Autonomous Hedge Fund: A collection of DeFi agents like Axelrod (which just launched for a 70x to early subscribers) and Velvet Unicorn that work with handling portfolio management, and others focusing on risk assessment or user interactions.
How the Autonomous Media House works – via Virtuals
While these clusters are technically live on Base mainnet, Virtuals is waiting for “a slot in the marketing calendar” to officially unveil them, likely in three to four weeks.
Following the public launch, Virtuals plans to open up the platform to all developers, so that new agents can be added to the clusters. A visualization tool will also be released, showing how agents can connect and work together in real-time.
As Jansen noted, this system puts Virtuals in direct competition with Google's recently announced A2A (Agent-to-Agent) system. “I think what they're critically missing is an innate transactional piece,” he said, highlighting ACP's blockchain-based advantage.
“This is a winner-takes-all market, and the first person who reaches a form of density of people using their standard will win.”
How the Autonomous Hedge Fund works – via Virtuals
Project 69: A New Model for Token Launches
While ACP develops in the background, Virtuals is preparing to launch Project 69 next Wednesday.
Project 69 tackles a significant problem: the reputational pressure that makes founders hesitant to launch tokens. “In Web2, if you fail a project, it's okay. You go and learn, then go and build better next round. In crypto, if you fail a project, you're a rugger,” Jansen said.
Project 69 offers a solution, namely a 69-day experimentation period where founders can test their projects without permanent commitment. Here's how it works:
69-Day Decision Window: When launching on Genesis, founders have 69 days to decide whether to continue the project long-term.
Commitment Rewards: If they choose to commit, they receive their team allocation and accumulated trading fees.
Automatic Unwinding: If they don't commit within 69 days, the liquidity pool automatically unwinds, returning funds to token holders and distributing trading fees proportionally.
To prevent abuse, Project 69 requires founders to be doxxed through a Loom video explaining their concept and intentions. This encourages accountability while still offering a clean off-ramp if needed. The community will also have ways to signal their support, including a petition feature.
The Road Ahead: Building an Agent Economy
Despite the excitement, Jansen remains realistic about the ecosystem.
Of the hundreds of tokens launched via Virtuals, he reasons only ~150 have “a worthy enough product,” and only a handful have found product-market fit.
He also acknowledged that many developers are still building “tooling agents” rather than fully autonomous agents, which was what Virtuals was designed for.
But this is precisely why Virtuals continues to evolve its platform—to meet developers where they are at, while pushing the ecosystem forward.
With ACP creating the infrastructure for agent collaboration and Project 69 lowering the barrier to experimentation, Virtuals is positioning itself at the center of the emerging agent economy, aiming to rival even the likes of Google.
Yet for now, the focus is on the imminent launch of Project 69 next week. This release could add even more fuel to fan the flames of Virtuals and kick off a new wave of innovation here, so keep an eye out for it.
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On this week’s AI Rollup, David, Ejaaz, and Josh track a real-world “Game of Thrones” drama as Apple hinted at ditching Google, Microsoft tightened its grip on OpenAI, and Sam Altman hired a specialist to build a killer AI consumer layer.
The Limitless crew also breaks down new frontier models like Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash and China’s 1.2-trillion-param DeepSeek R2, plus they dig into decentralized model training and the resurgence of agent tokens led by Virtuals.
Get all the highlights and hot takes—watch the full episode! 👇
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