A Review of the Five Waves of Web3 AI Projects

Since the intersection of blockchain and AI, the crypto space has undergone five major waves of AI concept booms. Each wave is led by representative projects or events, demonstrating the evolution from pure conceptual hype to gradual technical exploration.

01. The First Wave (Early Exploration Phase) - The Rise of AI Concept Coins: New Wine in Old Bottles

At the beginning of 2023, the emergence of ChatGPT sparked endless imagination in the crypto market about the prospects of "AI + Blockchain." A batch of early AI concept tokens saw their prices soar, marking the start of the first wave of market activity. A typical representative is Fetch.ai (FET), whose market capitalization once exceeded 200 million dollars. During the same period, AI-related coins such as SingularityNET (AGIX) and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) also led the market.

The characteristics of this stage are: old projects telling new stories - many AI concept coins issued between 2017 and 2019 have been revitalized by the momentum of ChatGPT, becoming the focus of capital pursuit. However, at that time, the products of these projects were mostly in their early stages, with few practical applications, and the increase in value mainly came from market sentiment and the anticipation of the big trend of AI.

02. The Second Wave - This Round of "Crypto Bull Market" Gives Rise to AI Meme Coins

As generative AI continues to gain popularity, the crypto community has begun to see a surge in AI Meme coins. A typical example is $TURBO - reportedly the world's first meme token created by AI. Digital artists used ChatGPT to help design and issue the TURBO token, with an initial funding of only $69. This AI "curated" frog-themed meme coin skyrocketed shortly after its launch, attracting a lot of retail attention.

The core feature of this wave is that AI has become a gimmick integrated into the crypto subculture. A large number of new projects claim to combine AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate coin names, imagery, or storylines, launching various meme tokens with AI elements. However, in essence, these meme coins lack any actual AI technology content and are merely community games that hype the AI concept. The second wave of enthusiasm gradually waned in the second half of 2024, with many AI meme coins rapidly going to zero, and the market began to cool down.

03. The Third Wave - AI Agent Memes and the GOAT Myth

From the second half of 2024 to early 2025, the crypto industry began to witness a new height in the fusion of AI and blockchain narratives: the emergence of AI Agents, which shifted the hype from simple memes to automated agents with storylines. A hallmark event driving this wave of enthusiasm was the rise of Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT).

$GOAT was originally issued as a meme coin on the Solana chain, but unlike before, it is backed by a story of "AI Intelligent Entity Genesis." With such a storyline, GOAT ignited market sentiment immediately after its launch - the price soared over 120 times on the first day (with a 24-hour increase of 12,000%), reaching a high of about $0.4664 within weeks!

The GOAT craze reveals the power of the AI Agent Narrative in the crypto space: teams or communities conceive a story of a "self-sufficient AI" leading a project, giving the token a sci-fi-like hype. However, most projects remain in the narrative stage, meaning they can only tell stories. This craze peaked around January 2025 and then collapsed, with the prices of tokens like GOAT quickly falling.

04. The Fourth Wave - The Rise of a16z's AI Ecosystem + Basic Concepts of AI Agents

After the previous waves of speculation receded, a number of AI projects that focus more on technology and ecological construction emerged at the end of 2024. Unlike the previous phase, which was primarily driven by community speculation, this stage saw the emergence of AI platform projects with well-known backgrounds or serious visions. Typical examples include: ai16z and Virtuals, which are regarded as representatives of the "a16z AI ecosystem". The common feature of these projects is the creation of AI Agent infrastructure, attempting to become the "app store" for AI intelligences in the Web3 domain.

$AI16z is a phenomenon-level AI Meme coin that will rise in November 2024, with a name that alludes to the well-known venture capital firm a16z. The project essentially positions itself as a decentralized AI smart trading fund based on Solana, namely "AI Investment DAO", which primarily utilizes AI agents to obtain on-chain and off-chain market information, analyze community sentiment, and automatically execute trades.

During the same period, the Virtuals protocol was very successful in ecological promotion as another representative project. Its team constructed an engaging narrative that attracted numerous developers to create AI agent projects on its platform, as well as a large number of retail investors participating in investments. At its peak, the Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of the leading projects within the Virtuals ecosystem once exceeded 5 billion dollars.

However, representatives of the fourth wave have not yet truly become the "app store" for AI Agents, but rather more like platforms that concentrate on AI Agent Memes.

05. Fifth Wave - "Hundred Flowers Blooming" Closer to Practical Applications

After a brief downturn, the WEB3 AI sector is regaining momentum in early Q2 2025. This time, the focus has clearly started to "return to reality": there are platforms and tools concentrating on the next generation of AI Agents; new AI ecosystems specifically suitable for the operation of AI projects; decentralized features for user data utilization for value storage; and even combinations of WEB3 AI with other high-tech fields like robotics. All of these present a "flourishing bloom" scenario.

Zerebro

As an AI intelligence project within the Solana ecosystem, Zerebro focuses on providing a decentralized content generation and agent deployment platform, attempting to build a "consumer-grade AI Agent Launchpad." Its team announced the development of an agent issuance platform called "Zentients" by the end of 2024, envisioning the use of the ZEREBRO token as a medium for the fees and value feedback for creating AI Agents.

Stimulated by this, the price of ZEREBRO tokens continued to rise at the beginning of 2025. Especially after experiencing prior adjustments, ZEREBRO soared 400% in just two days in April 2025, attracting significant market attention.

Metis' AI chain Hyperion + LazAI

Metis is an established ETH Layer 2 project that officially announced on May 7 that its "AI Chain Hyperion" testnet will be launched on May 14.

The emergence of the first AI chain, Hyperion, is to address the issues that all current L1 and L2 face: WEB3 AI projects require larger-scale computing power to meet frequent read and write operations and calculate states, while also trying to maintain decentralized characteristics as much as possible.

The second AI chain LazAI will be a completely new Layer 1, aimed at solving the value pricing mechanism for data contributed by individuals (including both personal and institutional). "Decentralized classified storage of personal data + data value pricing mechanism" will become LazAI's biggest feature, which is also the direction the entire industry should strive for: how to leverage the inherent characteristics of WEB3 to change some inadequacies of the WEB2 world.