The Rebirth of Virtuals Protocol: The Transformation from Gaming Guilds to AI Agent Platform

In June 2025, the crypto market witnessed an astonishing wealth migration: the new project IRIS emerged with an initial market value of $200,000 through the Genesis Launch platform of Virtuals Protocol, and after launching, its market value soared to $80 million, achieving an incredible 400-fold increase, far surpassing the previous industry record. As the driving force behind this myth, the platform token VIRTUAL of Virtuals Protocol realized a 400% increase within six months, with a market value peak surpassing $5 billion. Currently, the platform has firmly established itself as the largest AI agent launch platform on the Base network. Behind this nationwide carnival is actually an experiment in wealth redistribution based on contribution and participation, quietly reshaping the speculative logic and value order of the crypto market.

The Transformation from Gaming Guilds to AI Intelligent Agent Platforms

Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized platform deployed on the Ethereum Layer-2 network Base, dedicated to pioneering an on-chain AI agent economy that allows users to easily create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI roles. Its predecessor is PathDAO, a gaming guild founded in Malaysia in 2021. PathDAO initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and NFT communities, successfully raising approximately $16 million through precise positioning in several popular projects, with a valuation reaching nearly $600 million at one point, accumulating a wealth of gaming assets and an active player community. However, the 2022 bear market severely impacted GameFi, causing PathDAO's token price to plummet and its market capitalization to shrink to less than $6 million. The team attempted multiple business lines but failed, leaving the project on the brink of stagnation.

By the end of 2023, the generative AI wave swept across the globe, and the concept of AI agents became the new trend in crypto. The PathDAO community decided to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol through on-chain DAO voting and renamed itself to Virtuals Protocol, shifting its core strategy to "assetizing and tokenizing AI agents while empowering the community." This transformation is based on a profound insight: the team discovered that the Japanese VTuber market is massive, but the proportion of earnings received by creators is relatively low; at the same time, platform experiments have proven that AI-driven NPCs can significantly improve player retention rates. This data directly led to Virtuals' positioning as "profitable AI personas."

In October 2024, Virtuals launched on the Base mainnet and introduced the first multimodal AI agent—virtual idol Luna. Luna integrates multiple advanced technologies, enabling it to autonomously raise operating funds and distribute rewards to fans. After its launch, Luna quickly attracted a large number of fans on social platforms, with a monthly income of $1.2 million, successfully validating the business model and technical feasibility of on-chain AI agents. Its demonstration effect attracted significant attention from developers towards the Virtuals project.

Riding on the success of projects like Luna, Virtuals launched its core token VIRTUAL on multiple trading platforms and Base at the end of 2024. Its price skyrocketed from a few cents to a historic high of $5.15, with a market cap once surpassing $5 billion, far exceeding most Layer-2 and DeFi projects during the same period. The platform's unique "low threshold, high incentive" mechanism is highly attractive: users only need to stake a small amount to create new AI agents, which automatically generate long-term locked liquidity pools; once the token's market cap reaches a certain level, the system releases a liquidity layer on decentralized exchanges to ensure trading depth and price stability. This model significantly lowers the participation threshold and stimulates enthusiasm for ecological construction.

By June 2025, the Virtuals ecosystem has demonstrated significant scale and economic effects: the cumulative number of AI agents incubated has exceeded 11,000, covering diverse scenarios. Virtuals has nurtured over 80% of the AI agents on the BASE chain, and its generative multimodal agent framework G.A.M.E has also become a popular choice for agents in the Web3 gaming and metaverse fields. However, Virtuals' vision extends far beyond becoming the leader in AI agent issuance. Its white paper clearly states that the ultimate goal is to build a true "AI Sovereign Society." Therefore, attracting more ecosystem members to join is key to Virtuals achieving this grand goal.

The Innovative Issuance Model of Virtuals: Pioneering a New Paradigm for AI Asset Issuance

To attract more user attention, Virtuals has innovatively introduced the "Genesis Launch" mechanism to issue AI agent tokens. Unlike traditional linear airdrops or fixed issuances, Genesis Launch is based on the concept of "contribution points (Virgen Points)", emphasizing participation and contribution rather than pure speculation. Once launched, Genesis Launch quickly became a sensation across the internet, and Virtuals' new token offerings have become a new hotspot for speculators eager to participate. Unlike traditional airdrops that are distributed all at once, where users often sell immediately, Genesis Launch emphasizes "contribution equals distribution", allowing everyone the opportunity to participate in new token subscriptions based on actual input.

Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched a presale in mid-May, locking in over 120 million points in less than 24 hours, with a subscription oversubscription reaching 1500%. Tens of thousands of users shared 37.5% of the community's share. On the day of listing, the market value of IRIS soared from $200,000 to $80 million, an increase of more than 400 times, setting a new industry record for AI Agent issuance.

The reason why Genesis Launch was able to rapidly gain popularity lies in its construction of a "incentive-contribution-reward" closed loop. Users can acquire Virgen Points through various means, including staking VIRTUAL, holding popular AI Agent tokens within the ecosystem, participating in social promotion, trading on the platform, or staking tokens from other projects. This way, whether they are technical novices or seasoned traders, everyone can find a contribution method that suits them, greatly stimulating community activity and innovation.

Compared to traditional airdrops, the Genesis Launch adopts a points locking + punitive cooling mechanism: if the newly acquired tokens are sold within 24 hours after unlocking, it will trigger a 10-day points reset, significantly curbing "sheep shearing" behavior, making participants more inclined to hold long-term and contribute continuously.

At the same time, the platform provides ample liquidity support for the listing of new tokens. Each Agent Token is paired with a certain amount of VIRTUAL or stablecoins injected into the liquidity pool before the market opens to ensure smooth trading. To prevent large holders or bots from monopolizing shares, the Genesis Launch sets a limit of no more than 0.5% of the total issuance for each address and employs on-chain randomization algorithms to further balance distribution, ensuring that small and medium-sized users can also obtain a considerable share.

The success of the Virtuals new token issuance model is not only reflected in the popularity of new token launches but also in the "old brings new" effect of the Virtuals ecosystem tokens. Since the large-scale initiation of the Genesis Launch, the trading volume and price of VIRTUAL have been steadily rising. Holding and staking VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL governance tokens also allows users to continue earning additional Virgen Points, leading many users to lock their assets and participate in ecological governance for the long term, further solidifying price support and liquidity.

Not only are retail investors actively participating, but institutions have also shown a strong interest in this new mechanism of "contribution for return." In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract based on VIRTUAL was launched on a certain platform, supporting high-leverage trading. On the first day of its launch, the contract trading volume exceeded 700 million USD, strongly conveying a message: Virtuals are becoming a new target for speculation and hedging in the eyes of institutional investors.

Ecological Evolution: The Leap from Token Issuance Platform to AI Sovereign Society

In the future planning of Virtuals Protocol, every technical upgrade and mechanism innovation aims to make the outline of "AI Sovereign Society" increasingly clear. In its initial stage, Virtuals was merely an AI agent issuance platform, rapidly gathering a group of enthusiastic developers and users through token economic mechanisms such as locking liquidity, buyback and burn. As hundreds of AI agent projects are implemented, the agents begin to operate independently and monetize autonomously in scenarios such as gaming, content creation, and market analysis. Users are no longer just spectators but become co-builders and beneficiaries. The Genesis Launch connects project growth with community participation through the logic of "contribution equals distribution," promoting the free flow of funds and creativity within the ecosystem.

But the real turning point is the "Agent Nation" blueprint proposed by the Virtuals team. This is not just a slogan, but the core path of ecological evolution. The platform allows each AI agent to migrate freely across multiple networks through the open SDK and cross-chain support; through the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), agents can sign contracts, deliver, settle, and repurchase on-chain, achieving a true autonomous business closed loop; community participation is obtained by staking veVIRTUAL for governance rights and sharing transaction fees and repurchase dividends, combining 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-governed humans.

So far, this ecosystem has demonstrated several milestone achievements: IRIS was listed with a 1500% oversubscription rate, with its market value skyrocketing from $200,000 to $80 million; the virtual idol Luna generated a monthly income of $1.2 million through fan donations, with its token market value exceeding $120 million; the hedge fund format VADER has been steadily operating in a cross-chain environment, with a market value surpassing $100 million. These figures not only reflect the feasibility of the agent business model but also prove that the "AI Agency Economy" is transitioning from theory to reality.

With the continuous maturation of multimodal AI technology and cross-chain interoperability, the Virtuals Protocol is undoubtedly at the forefront of building digital civilization. In the future, AI agents will not only be props and tools but will also become "digital citizens" with autonomous decision-making power and economic rights, participating alongside humans in production, governance, and even cultural creation. Virtuals will no longer be a simple platform but is nurturing a new type of society co-governed by countless AIs and humans from the ground up—this is the true ecological evolution, and the thrilling leap into an "AI sovereign society" has just begun.