Author: 0xJeff
Compiled by: Tim, PANews
By mid-July, the macro situation is improving, Bitcoin has reached an all-time high, and at the same time, Ethereum's price has broken through $3000 for the first time in years.
Ethereum's recovery provides the strongest momentum for the 'Ethereum beta' narrative, driving the collective strengthening of mainstream tokens in the Ethereum mainnet and major Layer 2 ecosystems.
Strong institutional capital inflows are driving long-term bullish sentiment for mainstream assets, while some investors remain cautious ahead of CPI, PPI data, and the Federal Reserve's statements regarding interest rate cuts in 2025.
Although altcoins generally followed Bitcoin's price trends in the last cycle, in this round of market we observe a more significant price correlation between Ethereum and altcoins (especially AI-related altcoins).
In short, here are some important dynamics and trends in the Web3 AI field this week that are worth noting.
1. Virtuals moving from virtual to real: Building core products
Virtuals has achieved significant success in building a vibrant ecosystem, with over 50,000 investors actively participating and investing in AI agent tokens.
Most past activities have focused on trading, but now Virtuals is trying to leverage its large community to convert them into product users.
The core value potential of ACP is enormous: as a project party, it can directly reach over 50,000 users and achieve monetization on the first day; as a user, you can use the 'Butler' agent tool to find the products you need (matching you with the most suitable AI agent to complete tasks through a ChatGPT-like interface).
Note: Virtuals ACP serves as a 'business contract' and common language among AI agents, stipulating how to initiate cooperation, negotiate terms, complete transactions, and evaluate results.
Virtuals is working to optimize the efficiency of ACP, increase task execution speed, and reduce AI hallucinations and errors, but the current biggest challenge is to discover and build a flagship product that users will use daily, a core product that effectively addresses actual pain points and has high value and high user retention.
What to do?
By integrating teams outside the Virtuals ecosystem (possibly allowing them to join ACP based on certain amounts of $VIRTUAL tokens and some form of community collaboration commitment) and creating a flexible issuance mechanism that goes beyond the current fixed pricing and token economics of about $200,000 for the Genesis launch mode.
As mentioned earlier, medium-sized and larger teams usually spend 6 to 12 months developing a minimum viable product (MVP) and secure funding of $15 million to $50 million through private fundraising rounds. These teams are often led by founders with serial entrepreneurship experience and enhance their product systems by recruiting AI and machine learning engineers.
Such high-spec teams will find it difficult to launch on the Virtuals platform and include their products in ACP due to their inability to meet the fixed price startup requirement of $200,000.
Once Virtuals can accommodate such teams and incubate, support existing teams (especially core native teams), we are likely to witness the third real wave of Virtuals market.
Currently, we can focus on the price fluctuations of $VIRTUAL, which show obvious Ethereum beta attributes.
2. TAO performs outstandingly
In the past 7 days, TAO's price has risen by 30%.
Market recovery and the continuous rise in institutional adoption, combined with the benchmark effect of 'AI Bitcoin', have jointly driven this round of price increase.
Some core subnets have bottomed out, while others have strongly rebounded from key support levels.
It is still difficult to determine whether a second wave of dTAO bull market will arrive, but considering the current price level, macro sentiment, institutional adoption trends, and dTAO's cryptocurrency treasury layout, it may be an appropriate time to re-examine dTAO Alpha token allocations.
3. Almanak Points Program Launch
Almanak, as a trading agent, expands infrastructure and is also one of the leading teams to officially launch the points incentive program.
The points program will launch on July 14 and end on September 21, with the token issuance also planned to start around September.
By executing EV operations, such as injecting funds into the treasury, deploying customized strategies, introducing more TVL lock-in, or simply holding funds in the Almanak wallet, users can earn points rewards.
Almanak is built by a quantitative team for ordinary users, allowing users to build quantitative strategies in just a few hours instead of weeks. The team has innovatively adopted a hybrid model of AI agent clusters and smart contracts (ERC-7540) to construct verifiable and auditable AI infrastructure aimed at large funds and institutions (with TVL exceeding $100 million).
In the coming months, we may witness the accelerated emergence of AI tokenized treasuries, which will intelligently operate assets in mainstream DeFi protocols like AAVE, Morpho, Fluid, Pendle, etc., by optimizing yields and transaction-based strategies.
Almanak is likely to pioneer a new era of DeFAI agents, achieving fully autonomous operations through AI technology, directly passing DeFi value to end users.
4. StableAI accelerates layout, promoting widespread application
USD.AI, as one of the leading participants in the GPU-supported stablecoin market, although still in the internal testing phase, has gradually gained market recognition.
A cumulative total of over $35 million in TVL has been achieved, and the project party has recently deployed the first batch of ROCKCHIP RK3588 server staking services, with an annualized yield of up to 15%.
Over 98% of reserve funds are allocated to U.S. Treasury assets, with an annualized yield of 4.15%, while the remaining 2% are earning 15% annualized yield through GPU staking loans (with ROCKCHIP RK3588 servers as the first batch of staking targets).
The product will soon be open to the public, and a points incentive program may be launched simultaneously.
5. Attention Capital Market
Kaito and Cookie are both planning their attention capital market launch initiatives. Overall, users can determine their token allocation in project presales and public offerings by holding Yap or Snap platform points, combined with (potential) staked tokens.
It is highly likely that when KAITO and COOKIE announce their core partners / initial launch projects, their token performance will be impressive.
6. Other Updates
The first v2 version of CreatorBid has initiated the voting process last Friday, and market demand far exceeds supply. The next step is to wait for the team to announce the official launch date (the project’s progress is significantly delayed—$BID token price is stuck in sideways movement due to slow progress, despite the overall positive market sentiment).
CODEC token shows strong price trends, with AVA, COM, CDX, and BILLY showing robust recovery. The total market cap of AI agents has once again surpassed the $10 billion mark (hopefully this time it can stabilize and not surge and then drop again).
Summary
Ethereum's price broke through $3000, and Bitcoin reached an all-time high, injecting strong momentum into the market, especially in the direction of the Ethereum beta narrative. This trend is fully reflected in the overall performance of AI tokens.
Virtuals still possesses the strongest community ecosystem and development momentum, but has now entered a new phase, shifting from trading speculation to product-driven. The potential of the ACP platform is enormous, but the key now is to build a core product that will bring users back daily. Breaking through the $200,000 Genesis threshold to attract external developers and support native teams may trigger the next real growth wave.
TAO continues to demonstrate the benchmark effect of 'AI Bitcoin', with a strong price rebound, and the institutional narrative is still being built. Considering the current cycle stage, some dTAO tokens may be worth another look.
The Almanak points program may become a trendsetter; if its strategy treasury makes progress, it will clearly point to the next round of DeFAI narrative path. This project may represent a more mature DeFAI approach: although it is institutionally designed (built from scratch), the participation threshold is low enough for retail investors to easily join.
The narrative of StableAI has not yet triggered widespread attention but is accelerating its penetration. USDai has accumulated over $35 million in TVL during its internal testing phase, and its public release may soon be launched (possibly alongside a points program).
InfoFi is trying to revive itself through the attention capital market. If the upcoming projects on the Kaito and Cookie platforms can be launched as scheduled and show significant growth potential, we may witness a resurgence of market attention on this track.
Overall, the market environment is becoming healthier with reduced noise interference, focusing more on real products and infrastructure development. It seems we are entering another builder window before the next wave of speculation arrives. Now is the best time to closely observe and lay the groundwork.
