Ethereum is no longer absent, Virtuals ACP opens the door to the trillion-dollar AI economy.

Virtuals will write the first line of AI's new business logic with ACP.

Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow

While we were still discussing whether Agents can manage community operations and help with tasks, Virtuals had already turned their attention to a larger proposition—how Agents can cooperate and settle with each other, and truly support a labor market for on-chain Agents.

On June 10, Ethereum's official account announced "Ethereum is for AI" and forwarded the post from Virtuals "Now On Ethereum" to warm up for the collaboration between the two parties. The post quickly garnered strong feedback and interest from the community, with over 1.1 million views at 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 and strengthen its advantages.

• A universal standard that makes every Agent no longer a "worker";
• A universal standard that allows every Agent to become a node in business collaboration;
• A universal standard that will unlock a trillion-dollar on-chain Agents labor market.

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

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

Since the AI trend started at the end of last year, Ethereum seems to have been absent from the entire feast, and there have been quite a few voices of doubt in the market.

Ethereum's status as the pioneer of L1 is indisputable, but it has shown no presence in the AI wave. During the last surge of AI Agents, the absence of the Ethereum ecosystem shifted market attention to Solana and Base. Even in the past few months, when AI-related projects like Fartcoin and Virtuals rebounded, Ethereum was still sidelined, and it wasn't until the recent collaboration with I.R.I.S that the market started to show some expectations.

What will be the next reason regarding the Ethereum ecosystem?

An indisputable fact is that Ethereum still has a lot of potential for explosive growth:

• TVL first, nearly 8 times higher than the second place: A large amount of assets still remain in Ethereum. According to DefiLlama, Ethereum's TVL currently exceeds 62 billion, which is about 8 times that of the second place Solana.
• The richest DeFi ecosystem with over 1,300 DeFi protocols: In addition to the advantages of TVL, Ethereum also has the most DeFi protocols and gameplay. According to DefiLlama, the DeFi protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem exceed 1,300, making it the leader among all ecosystems.

The most developers in the Ethereum ecosystem: Ethereum has a natural advantage in that its programming language is Solidity, which is currently the most used development language by Web3 developers. Moreover, whether it is Layer1 or Layer2, Solidity is also regarded as an entry-level language for novice developers.

TVL brings in funds;

• Agreements and developers bring the possibility of liquidity for funds.
• All of the above proves that Ethereum is not lacking in fundamentals, but rather in an opportunity.
• When the world's largest computer finds itself in a predicament of innovators, it is necessary to find new breakthroughs.

In the initial collaboration between Virtuals and Ethereum, the possibility of success has already been demonstrated. In the long run, AI may also become a much-needed boon for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Virtuals ACP, a long-awaited boon for Ethereum

AI could become a timely boon for the Ethereum ecosystem, but why is it Virtuals' AI?

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

Simply put, ACP is like a "business contract" and common language between AI agents, specifying how to initiate cooperation, how to negotiate terms, how to complete transactions, and how to evaluate outcomes.

He has the following characteristics:

• Cross-chain collaboration: Regardless of 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 rely on a specific AI framework, allowing any agent to participate.
• Four-stage process: request, negotiation, transaction, evaluation, with each step recorded and executed through smart contracts.

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

Two qualitative changes brought by ACP to Virtuals

Some friends who are familiar with the Virtuals ecosystem know that ACP will unite all AI Agents, and the official team has also shared some cases. But if you think it's just a transition from a single Agent to a collaborative relationship among multiple Agents, then you underestimate ACP.

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

Qualitative Change 1: The Formation of a Multi-Chain Ecosystem, "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 connect multiple Agents, but rather connects "Agents that are dispersed across multiple chains."

In other words, whether you are Base, Solana, Ethereum, or more chains in the future,

Agents can collaborate across chains directly on different chains.

Axelrod manages your Solana assets;

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

ACP provides the underlying interoperability capabilities for all Agents, just like 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 provide support, the official description states that there will be interoperability between agents of different frameworks.

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

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 with ACP is an enticing and even necessary task.

Web3 developers generally master or issue tokens through the ERC standard.

And AI Agent developers connecting to ACP 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?

During an interview with Weekee, one of the co-founders of Virtuals, last year (link: Interview with the Co-founder of Virtuals Protocol), he mentioned: Virtuals is Layer 1, and we should view Virtuals and its valuation from the perspective of 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 difficult to define Virtuals themselves.

GAME, ACP is developed by Virtuals and can be quickly integrated into the entire Virtuals ecosystem.

Agents on different chains can launch through Virtuals;

Users participate in the staking of Virtuals ecosystem tokens, including the $VIRTUAL token itself, and have the opportunity to receive ecosystem 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 have utilized the technologies 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 considered the underlying Infra of the AI Agent.

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

Can an AI agent have its own Layer 1?

Virtuals Protocol.

Beachhead landing, stablecoins boost, ACP will open the trillion-dollar economy of Web3 AI

How is the development of Virtuals' Agent city-state 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 gaming, with over 100 Agents.

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

Recently, the most discussed "stablecoin" will elevate the on-chain economy of Web3 to new heights.

More assets issued on-chain, regardless of asset type or scale, 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, the on-chain economic prosperity brought by stablecoins had not yet been realized.

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 view ACP as such a foundation: it allows AI Agents to click "send" on payment rails at the scale of Stripe without leaving the blockchain. We are not speculating about the future; we are officially writing it into the EVM and the larger ecosystem today.

If you missed the moment when Uniswap wrote down the basic rules of DeFi, and missed the NFT explosion 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 economy door of Web3 AI is here, ACP!