Messari: AI-powered Pump.fun Virtuals

Author: Justin Baba, Messari analyst; Translator: 0xjs@黄金财经

Last week, Virtuals Protocol, built on Base, launched its AI agent platform. It combines AI and tokenized economy and allows users to create, own and monetize agents.

• Inspired by memecoin, it turns AI agents into interactive, community-driven digital assets that provide utility and entertainment in games, social platforms and virtual worlds.

• Essentially, Virtuals has created a Pump.fun platform for AI agents.

Virtuals supports the permissionless creation of AI agents with token-based ownership.

• Each agent will have a supply of 1 billion tokens at launch, giving holders governance rights and economic rewards. Agents are multimodal and can operate across text, voice, and visual interfaces, enabling rich, personalized interactions.  

• The protocol allows token holders to shape agent development and share in revenue, allowing holders to speculate on the success of various AI agents.

VIRTUAL is the protocol’s native token, powering transactions and governance.

• Similar to how FriendTech’s token liquidity pools are paired with FRIEND tokens, agent tokens are paired with VIRTUAL, and the liquidity pools are locked up for ten years. This lockup helps ensure stability and prevent “runaway” transactions.

• In addition, the revenue generated by the agents (collected in VIRTUAL) is used to buy back and burn the agent’s tokens. This creates deflationary pressure, aligning incentives for developers and token holders.

Source: Virtuals Project Documentation

In addition, thanks to real-time memory and adaptive behavior, Virtuals agents can maintain a consistent personality across different platforms.

• This ensures cohesive interactions—whether in productivity applications, games, or social media—that provide 24/7 engagement and evolve with user interactions.

As the first AI agent launchpad platform, Virtuals is the first to expand the AI ​​agent economy by tokenizing agent access. Although still in the early stages of development, the mechanisms in place lay the foundation for a new on-chain economy that will continue to grow as AI becomes more prevalent in our daily lives.