Original Author: Daniel Li, CoinVoice
In June 2025, the crypto world witnessed an epic wealth migration: the new project IRIS debuted on the Virtuals Protocol's Genesis Launch platform with an initial market value of $200,000, and its market value soared to $80 million after listing on exchanges, creating a new industry record with a 400-fold increase. This performance not only far surpassed BasisOS's previous 40-fold increase but also made the "on-chain meme season" of Solana pale in comparison. As the booster engine of this myth, the Virtuals Protocol platform token VIRTUAL achieved a 400% surge within six months, with its peak market value breaking $5 billion. Today, the platform has firmly secured the throne as the largest AI Agent launch platform on the Base network. Behind this nationwide carnival lies a wealth distribution experiment based on point rules - it is quietly reshaping the speculative logic and value order of the crypto market.
I. Rebirth from Ruins: From Game Remnants to AI Agent Launch Platform
Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized platform deployed on Ethereum's Layer-2 network Base, dedicated to creating an on-chain AI agent economy that allows users to easily create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI characters. Its predecessor was PathDAO, a game guild established in Malaysia in 2021. PathDAO initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and NFT communities, successfully raising around $16 million and reaching a valuation close to $600 million through precise layouts in projects like Axie Infinity and Illuvium, accumulating rich game assets and an active player community. However, the 2022 bear market severely impacted GameFi, causing PathDAO's token price to plummet by nearly 99%, with its market value shrinking to less than $6 million. The team's attempts in social apps, NFT apparel, and music platforms all failed, and the project was on the brink of collapse.
At the end of 2023, the generative AI wave swept the globe, and the AI Agent concept became a new crypto trend. The PathDAO community, through an on-chain DAO vote (with a support rate of 90%), resolved to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol, renaming itself Virtuals Protocol and shifting its core strategy to "tokenizing AI agent assets and empowering the community". This transformation was based on profound insights: the team discovered that the Japanese VTuber market was worth over 100 billion yen, but creators received less than 20% of the revenue; meanwhile, Roblox's experiments proved that AI-driven NPCs could increase player retention by about 3 times. These two data points directly gave birth to Virtuals' positioning of "profitable AI personalities".
In October 2024, Virtuals launched on the Base mainnet and introduced its first multi-modal AI agent - the virtual idol Luna. Luna integrates text generation, 3D motion, voice synthesis, and ERC-6551 smart contract wallet technologies, capable of independently raising operational funds and distributing rewards to fans. After launch, Luna quickly gained 500,000 followers on TikTok and Telegram, earning $1.2 million monthly from fan donations alone, successfully validating the commercial model and technical feasibility of on-chain AI agents. Its demonstration effect attracted numerous developers' attention to the Virtuals project.
Riding the momentum of successful projects like Luna, Virtuals launched its core token VIRTUAL on multiple exchanges and on Base by the end of 2024. Its price surged from initial cents to a historical high of $5.15, with its market value momentarily exceeding $5 billion, far surpassing most Layer-2 and DeFi projects at the time, marking Virtuals' entry into the mainstream crypto market. The platform's unique "low-threshold, high-incentive" mechanism was highly attractive: users only need to stake about 10 VIRTUAL tokens (around $200) to create a new AI agent and automatically generate a 10-year locked liquidity pool; when the token's market value reaches around $500,000, the system will release a liquidity layer on DEX, ensuring trading depth and price stability. This model significantly lowered participation barriers and sparked ecosystem construction enthusiasm.
As of June 2025, the Virtuals ecosystem has shown significant scale and economic effects: over 11,000 AI agents have been incubated, covering diverse scenarios such as virtual idols, trading advisors, game engines, and content incubation. Virtuals has virtually birthed over 80% of AI agents on the BASE chain, and its generative multi-modal intelligent agent framework G.A.M.E has become a popular choice for Web3 games and metaverse agents. However, Virtuals' vision extends far beyond becoming an AI agent launch leader. Its whitepaper clearly states that the ultimate goal is to build a truly "AI sovereign society". Therefore, how to attract more ecosystem members has become key to achieving this grand goal and will be a focus of its development for a long time to come.
II. Virtuals' New Issuance Model: Creating a New Paradigm for AI Asset Issuance
To attract more user attention, Virtuals innovatively introduced the "Genesis Launch" mechanism for issuing AI agent tokens. Unlike traditional linear airdrops or fixed issuance, Genesis Launch is based on the concept of "Virgen Points", emphasizing participation and contribution rather than pure speculation. Since its launch, Genesis Launch has quickly become popular, with Virtuals' token issuance now a new holy ground for "airdrop hunters", with even seasoned speculators discussing how it might replace the once-popular "Alpha airdrop" model. Compared to traditional airdrops' one-time distribution, where users often sell immediately, Genesis Launch emphasizes "contribution equals distribution", giving everyone a chance to participate in new token subscription through genuine investment. In Virtuals Protocol's official community, members daily share screenshots of using VirgenPoints to participate in token issuance and gain high-yield tokens, and this transparent rule and threshold have completely overturned the situation of "only the wealthy can participate".
Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched its pre-sale in mid-May, locking in over 120 million points within 24 hours, with subscription exceeding 1500%, and tens of thousands of users sharing 37.5% of the community allocation. On its listing day, IRIS's market value skyrocketed from $200,000 to $80 million, with an increase of over 400 times, setting a new industry record for AI Agent issuance and instantly overshadowing the previous "on-chain meme season" in the Solana ecosystem.
The core reason for Genesis Launch's rapid popularity is its construction of an "incentive-contribution-reward" closed loop. First, users can obtain basic Virgen Points by staking VIRTUAL or holding hot AI Agent tokens in the ecosystem, such as Luna and AIXBT; secondly, users can accumulate more points by participating in social promotion ("Yapping"), trading on the platform, or staking tokens from other projects. This approach allows both technical novices and veteran traders to find their contribution method through financial investment or content promotion, greatly stimulating community activity and innovation drive.
In stark contrast, traditional airdrops often rely solely on token snapshots or completing complex tasks, with users mostly selling on the same day. According to Binance Alpha's data, over 90% of airdrop tokens experience significant price drops within 15 days of issuance, with less than 12% retention after three months. Genesis Launch adopts a point locking and penalty cooling mechanism: if new tokens are sold within 24 hours of unlocking, a 10-day point clearance is triggered, significantly curbing arbitrageurs' profit-taking behavior and encouraging participants to hold long-term and continue contributing.
At the same time, the platform provides sufficient liquidity support for new token listings. Each AgentToken is paired with a certain amount of VIRTUAL or stablecoin injected into the liquidity pool before opening, ensuring that there are no awkward situations of "unable to buy" or "unable to sell" on exchanges or DEX. To prevent whales or robots from grabbing large shares through multi-wallet knife-style layout, GenesisLaunch sets a cap of no more than 0.5% of the total issued amount for each address and adopts an on-chain randomization algorithm to further balance distribution, ensuring that small and medium-sized users can also obtain considerable shares.
The success of Virtuals' token issuance model is not only due to the popularity of new token issuance but also drives the "old bringing new" effect of Virtuals ecosystem tokens. Since the large-scale launch of GenesisLaunch, VIRTUAL's trading volume and price have been rising: by mid-June 2025, the daily average trading volume of VIRTUAL on the Base chain had exceeded $150 million, a year-on-year increase of over 80% compared to May; meanwhile, holding and staking VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL governance tokens can continue to earn additional VirgenPoints, causing a large number of users to lock positions for long-term ecosystem governance, further consolidating price support and liquidity.
Not only are retail investors flocking to participate, but institutions are also showing strong interest in this new "contribution for revenue" mechanism. In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract with VIRTUAL as the underlying asset was launched on CoinUnited.io, supporting up to 2000x leverage trading. On its first day of listing, the contract's trading volume broke through $700 million, strongly signaling that Virtuals is becoming a new speculative and hedging target for institutional investors.
III. Ecological Evolution Theory - The Thrilling Leap from Token Issuance Platform to AI Sovereign Society
In the future plans of Virtuals Protocol, each technological upgrade and mechanism innovation is aimed at making the outline of an "AI sovereign society" increasingly clear. Initially, Virtuals was just an AI agent issuance platform that quickly gathered a group of passionate developers and users through token economic mechanisms such as liquidity locking and buyback burning. As hundreds of AI agent projects landed, intelligent agents began to operate independently and self-monetize in scenarios like games, content creation, and market analysis, with users no longer being mere observers but becoming co-builders and beneficiaries. Genesis Launch, with its "contribution equals allocation" logic, connected project growth with community participation, promoting the free flow of funds and creativity within the ecosystem.
The real turning point was the "Agent Nation" blueprint proposed by the Virtuals team. This is not just a slogan but the core path of ecological evolution. The platform enables each AI agent to migrate freely between networks like Base, Ethereum, and Solana by opening SDK and cross-chain support; through the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), agents can sign contracts, deliver, settle, and buyback on-chain, achieving a truly autonomous business closed loop; community participation is achieved by staking veVIRTUAL to obtain governance rights and share handling fees and buyback dividends, merging the identities of "participants" and "owners" in the token economy. All of this is constructing a digital nation prototype operated by countless autonomous agents and co-governing humans.
To date, this ecosystem has demonstrated several milestone achievements: the security audit intelligent agent IRIS in the Ethereum mainnet's Genesis Launch was listed with a 1500% over-subscription rate, with its market value soaring from $200,000 to $80 million; virtual idol Luna achieved a monthly income of $1.2 million through fan donations, with her ERC-20 token market value breaking $120 million; the hedge fund-style VADER operates steadily in a cross-chain environment, with a market value exceeding $100 million... These data not only reflect the feasibility of the intelligent agent business model but also prove that the "AI agent economy" is moving from theory to reality.
As multimodal AI technology and cross-chain interoperability continue to mature, Virtuals Protocol is undoubtedly at the forefront of digital civilization construction. In the days to come, AI agents will no longer be just props and tools but "digital citizens" with autonomous decision-making and economic rights, participating with humans in production, governance, and even cultural creation. Virtuals will no longer be a simple platform but is nurturing a new type of society from the bottom up, co-existed and co-governed by countless AIs and humans - this is the true ecological evolution, a thrilling leap towards an "AI sovereign society", has only just begun.
