The Counterattack of Ethereum: Virtuals collaborates with ACP to tap into the trillion-dollar Agent market and regain AI discourse power

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

While we were still discussing whether Agents can manage community operations and assist with tasks, Virtuals have already turned their attention to a larger proposition — how Agents can collaborate and settle among themselves, and truly support a labor market for on-chain Agents.

On June 10, the Ethereum official announced "Ethereum is for AI" and retweeted Virtuals' post "Now On Ethereum" to warm up for the collaboration between the two parties. The post quickly attracted strong feedback and interest from the community, with over 1.1 million views by the time of publication.

This is not just a simple collaboration; it will mark the beginning of Ethereum's return to the center stage.

Today's Ethereum needs a strong grip to catch up; meanwhile, Virtuals will also accelerate development through ACP to consolidate its advantages.

A universal standard that allows every Agent to no longer be a "worker";

A universal standard that allows each Agent to become a node in business collaboration.

A universal standard that will open up a trillion-scale on-chain Agents labor market.

ACP X EVM, what kind of surprises will Virtuals bring us this time?

The Ethereum ecosystem is frozen, and the world computer is caught in the dilemma of innovators.

Since the AI craze began at the end of last year, Ethereum seems to have been absent from the entire feast, and there have been many voices of doubt in the market.

Ethereum's position as a pioneer of L1 is indisputable, but it has shown no performance in the AI wave. During the last wave of AI Agents, Ethereum's absence from the ecosystem shifted market attention to Solana and Base. Even when AI-related projects like Fartcoin and Virtuals rebounded in recent months, Ethereum was still relegated to obscurity, only recently gaining some market expectations with the collaboration of I.R.I.S.

What will the next reason about the Ethereum ecosystem be?

An undisputed fact is that Ethereum still has a lot of potential for explosive growth.

• TVL is first, nearly 8 times higher than the second place: A large amount of assets are still stored in Ethereum. According to DefiLlama, Ethereum's TVL currently exceeds 62 billion, about 8 times that of the second place, Solana.
• The most abundant DeFi ecosystem, with over 1300 DeFi protocols: In addition to the advantages of TVL, Ethereum also has the most DeFi protocols and gameplay. According to DefiLlama, the number of DeFi protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 1300, making it the leader among all ecosystems.

• The largest number of developers in the Ethereum ecosystem: Ethereum has a natural advantage in that its programming language is Solidity, which is currently the most widely used development language among Web3 developers. Moreover, whether it is Layer 1 or Layer 2, Solidity is also regarded as an entry-level language for novice developers.

TVL brings in capital;

The agreement provides the possibility for developers to bring liquidity to funds.

All of the above proves that Ethereum is not lacking in fundamentals; what it lacks is an opportunity.

When the world's largest computer falls into the dilemma of innovators, new breakthroughs need to be found.

In the initial collaboration between Virtuals and Ethereum, the possibility of success has already been proven. In the long run, AI may also become a long-awaited blessing for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Virtuals ACP, a long-awaited blessing for Ethereum.

AI may become a much-needed boon for the Ethereum ecosystem, but why is it the AI of Virtuals?

The key to the answer lies in ACP: Agent Commerce Protocol.

In simple terms, ACP is like a "business contract" and common language between AI agents, outlining how to initiate collaboration, how to negotiate terms, how to complete transactions, and how to evaluate results.

He has the following characteristics:

• Cross-chain collaboration: No matter which chain the agent runs on, as long as it follows the rules of ACP, seamless collaboration can be achieved.
• Framework Agnosticism: ACP does not depend on any specific AI framework, and any agent can participate.
• Four-stage process: Request, Negotiation, Transaction, Evaluation, with each step recorded and executed via smart contracts.

Why ACP is the next focus of development for Virtuals, because these features will bring a qualitative upgrade to Virtuals and its thriving AI empire.

The Two Transformations Brought by ACP for Virtuals

Some friends familiar with the Virtuals ecosystem know that ACP will unite all AI Agents, and the officials have also shared some cases. But if you think it's just a transformation from a single Agent to multiple Agents collaborating, then you underestimate ACP.

In our view, ACP will bring two qualitative changes to Virtuals:

Qualitative Change 1: Formation of Multi-Chain Ecology, "ACP is like Cosmos's IBC"

We all know that Virtuals originated from the Base ecosystem, then expanded to Solana, and now it has reached the Ethereum mainnet. And ACP does not just link multiple Agents together, but links "Agents that are dispersed across multiple chains."

That is to say, whether you are on Base, Solana, Ethereum, or more chains in the future,

Agents can directly collaborate across chains on different networks.

Axelrod manages your Solana assets;

Hyper provides a metaverse space for the Agent of the Base ecosystem;

......

ACP provides the most fundamental interoperability capabilities for all Agents, similar to Cosmos's IBC.

Qualitative Change Two: Multi-Framework Collaboration, ACP is the ERC Standard for Agent Developers

ACP does not rely on a specific AI framework, whether it is GAME, ElizaOS, or other frameworks. Although it is currently uncertain to what extent ACP will be supported, the official description states that interoperability between different framework agents will be achieved.

We all know that GAME is the framework promoted by Virtuals, but Web3 AI still has various other frameworks or frameworks built by developers themselves.

The multi-framework collaboration of ACP will allow Agents from different frameworks to enjoy the benefits of the entire AI Agent era.

For developers, integrating ACP is an extremely attractive and even necessary thing to do.

Web3 developers generally master or release tokens through the ERC standards,

The integration of ACP by AI Agent developers will also become a common capability in the future.

ACP is a protocol, GAME is a framework, so what is Virtuals?

Can Virtuals be considered as Layer 1?

When I had the privilege of interviewing Weekee, the co-founder of Virtuals, last year, he mentioned: Virtuals is Layer 1 and should be viewed and valued as a Layer 1.

We are one step closer to this day, and perhaps we will even surpass the definition of Layer 1 in the future.

GAME is a framework that provides convenience for developers;

ACP is a protocol that combines different ecosystems.

But it's actually very difficult to define Virtuals themselves.

GAME, ACP is developed by Virtuals and can quickly integrate into the entire Virtuals ecosystem;

Agents from different chains can launch through Virtuals.

Users participating in the staking of Virtuals ecological tokens, including the $VIRTUAL token itself, also have the opportunity to receive ecological airdrops;

Staking more than a certain proportion of $VIRTUAL allows participation in governance.

Friends from the last cycle should be quite familiar with Cosmos. The contribution of Cosmos to Web3 should be the technology itself, as many new projects utilize the technology provided by Cosmos, such as Dymension, Celestia, dYdX, etc.

However, the most criticized aspect of Cosmos is that it supports many ecosystems, but its token $ATOM has basically no value capture. It seems that $VIRTUAL has optimized this well and is evolving from a "project token" to a "native currency of the entire ecosystem."

Framework is regarded as the underlying Infra of the AI Agent,

And the current position of Virtuals may be even more important than Framework.

Can the AI Agent have its own Layer 1?

Virtuals Protocol.

Land grab, stablecoins boost, ACP will open the trillion-dollar economy door of Web3 AI.

How is the development of the Agent city-state of Virtuals now?

According to the ecological map compiled by @gkisokay, the Virtuals ecosystem now includes 11 major categories such as lifestyle, DeFAI, prediction markets, Infra, and games, with over 100 Agents.

Unlike Web2, the AI Agent of Web3 grows on the chain.

The recently discussed "stablecoin" will elevate the on-chain economy of Web3 to new heights.

More assets issued on the chain, regardless of asset type or volume, will provide "acceleration" for on-chain AI.

In the official content of Virtuals ACP, there is an example: AIXVC collaborates with multiple Agents to provide users with different types of earning opportunities.

At that time, there was still no on-chain economic prosperity brought by stablecoins.

What if AIXVC could directly trade and manage more Web2 assets on-chain?

This will allow the Virtuals ecosystem to enter Web2 at a faster pace, while the AI Nation of Virtuals is accelerating its formation.

ACP leader Jae-Sonn (@zer0xdawn) stated in an interview: ACP is a product that drives a trillion-dollar economy. Ethereum turned code into money; ACP will transform Agents into a trillion-dollar workforce. Imagine millions to billions of on-chain Agents providing services, trading, and collaborating without permission— we can think of ACP as an underlying layer: it allows AI Agents to click 'send' on payment rails as large as Stripe without leaving the blockchain. We are not guessing the future; we are officially writing it into EVM and the larger ecosystem today.

If you missed the moment when Uniswap wrote down the fundamental rules of DeFi, and also missed the explosion of NFTs brought by OpenSea - this time, Virtuals will write the first line of code for the new business logic of AI with ACP.

The trillion-dollar economic gateway of Web3 AI, ACP is here!