The Rebirth of Virtuals Protocol: The Transformation from the Ruins of Blockchain Games to an AI Agent Issuance Platform

In June 2025, the crypto world witnessed an unprecedented migration of wealth: the new project IRIS debuted on the Genesis Launch platform of Virtuals Protocol with an initial market value of $200,000, and after going live, its market value soared to $80 million, setting a new industry record with a 400-fold increase. This performance not only far exceeded previous record increases but also rendered other popular projects in different ecosystems pale in comparison. As the driving force behind this myth, the platform token VIRTUAL of Virtuals Protocol achieved a 400% surge within six months, with a market cap peak surpassing $5 billion. Today, this platform has become the largest AI agent launch platform on a certain network. However, behind this nationwide celebration lies a wealth distribution experiment restructured based on point rules – it is silently reshaping the speculative logic and value order of the crypto market.

Ruins Rebirth: From the Remnants of Blockchain Games to the AI Intelligent Agent Issuance Platform

Virtuals Protocol (abbreviated as Virtuals) is a decentralized platform deployed on a Layer-2 network, dedicated to pioneering the on-chain AI agent economy, allowing users to conveniently create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI characters. Its predecessor was a gaming guild established in Malaysia in 2021. The guild initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and the NFT community, successfully raising approximately $16 million through precise positioning in multiple popular projects, reaching a valuation close to $600 million, and accumulating a wealth of gaming assets and an active player community. However, the 2022 bear market severely impacted GameFi, leading to a nearly 99% drop in the guild's token price, with its market capitalization shrinking to less than $6 million. The team’s attempts at various business lines, including a social app, NFT apparel, and a music platform, all ended in failure, leaving the project on the brink of abandonment.

By the end of 2023, the wave of generative AI swept across the globe, and the concept of AI agents became a new trend in cryptocurrency. This guild community decided to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol through on-chain DAO voting (with a support rate of 90%) and renamed itself to Virtuals Protocol, with a core strategy shifting to "assetization, tokenization, and empowering the community with AI intelligent agents." This transformation is based on profound insights: the team found that the Japanese VTuber market size exceeds 100 billion yen, but creators only receive less than 20% of the revenue; at the same time, experiments by a certain platform have proven that AI-driven NPCs can increase player retention rates by about three times. These two pieces of data directly gave rise to the positioning of Virtuals as "profitable AI personalities."

In October 2024, Virtuals launched on the mainnet and introduced the first multimodal AI agent - virtual idol Luna. Luna integrates text generation, 3D motion, voice synthesis, and smart contract wallet technologies, allowing it to autonomously raise operational funds and distribute rewards to fans. After its launch, Luna quickly gained 500,000 followers on social media, achieving a monthly income of 1.2 million USD solely from fan tips, successfully validating the commercial model and technical feasibility of on-chain AI agents. Its demonstration effect attracted a large number of developers to pay attention to the Virtuals project itself.

Riding on the success of projects like Luna, Virtuals plans to launch its core token VIRTUAL on multiple trading platforms and mainnets by the end of 2024. Its price skyrocketed from a few cents to a historical high of $5.15, with a market capitalization once exceeding $5 billion, far surpassing most Layer-2 and DeFi projects during the same period, marking Virtuals' entry into the mainstream crypto market. The platform's innovative "low threshold, high incentive" mechanism is highly attractive: users only need to stake about 10 VIRTUAL (approximately $200) to create a new AI agent, which automatically generates a liquidity pool locked for 10 years; when the token's market value reaches about $500,000, the system will release liquidity layers 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 such as virtual idols, trading advisors, game engines, and content incubation. Virtuals has almost nurtured over 80% of the AI agents on the blockchain, 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 goes far beyond becoming the leader in AI agent issuance. Its white paper clearly states that the ultimate goal is to build a truly "AI sovereign society." Therefore, how to attract more ecosystem members to join is the key to Virtuals achieving this grand goal and will be a focus of its development for a long time to come.

Virtuals New Issuance Model: Creating a New Paradigm for AI Asset Issuance

In order to attract more user attention, Virtuals has innovatively introduced the "Genesis Launch" mechanism for the issuance of 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. As soon as Genesis Launch was launched, it quickly became a sensation across the internet. Currently, Virtuals’ new token offerings have become a new hotspot for investors, with even seasoned speculators discussing how it might replace the once-popular airdrop model. Unlike traditional airdrops that distribute tokens in a one-time manner, often leading users to sell immediately, Genesis Launch emphasizes "contribution equals distribution", giving everyone the opportunity to participate in new token subscriptions based on real contributions. Almost every day in the official community of Virtuals Protocol, members can be seen sharing screenshots of their earnings from participating in new token offerings using Virgen Points, fundamentally overturning the situation of "wealthy individuals monopolizing, retail investors being left out" with its open and transparent rules and thresholds.

Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched its pre-sale in mid-May, locking in over 120 million points in less than 24 hours, with a subscription overshoot reaching 1500%. Tens of thousands of users shared 37.5% of the community's share. On the day of listing, IRIS's market value soared from $200,000 to $80 million, an increase of over 400 times, breaking the industry record for AI Agent issuance and instantly dimming the previous wave of enthusiasm from other ecosystems.

The reason why Genesis Launch was able to rapidly gain popularity lies in its construction of a "incentive-contribution-reward" closed loop. First, users can earn basic Virgen Points by staking VIRTUAL or holding the highly sought-after AI Agent tokens within 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 other project tokens. This way, whether you are a technical novice or an experienced trader, you can find a contribution method that suits you in terms of financial investment or content promotion, greatly stimulating community activity and innovation.

In stark contrast, traditional airdrops often rely solely on holding snapshots or completing complicated tasks. Most users sell the tokens on the same day they receive them. According to data from a certain platform, over 90% of airdrop tokens experience a significant price drop within 15 days of issuance, with a retention rate of less than 12% after three months. In contrast, Genesis Launch employs a points locking and 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 the arbitrage behavior of 'sheep shearing' participants and encouraging them 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 opening, ensuring that there is no awkward situation of "unable to buy" or "unable to sell" on exchanges or decentralized exchanges. To prevent large holders or bots from seizing a significant share through multi-wallet sniper layouts, Genesis Launch sets a limit of no more than 0.5% of the total issuance for each address, and employs an on-chain randomization algorithm to further balance distribution, ensuring that small and medium users can also gain a considerable share.

The success of the Virtuals new issuance model is not only due to the popularity of the new token issuance but also promotes the "old brings new" effect of the Virtuals ecological token. Since the large-scale launch of the Genesis Launch, the trading volume and price of VIRTUAL have been rising sharply: by mid-June 2025, the average daily trading volume of VIRTUAL on-chain had exceeded $150 million, an increase of over 80% compared to May; at the same time, holding and staking VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL governance tokens also allows users to continue earning additional Virgen Points, which encourages a large number of users to lock up their assets and participate in ecological governance in the long term, further solidifying price support and liquidity.

Not only are retail investors flocking to participate, but institutions are also showing strong interest in this new mechanism of "contribution for returns." In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract with VIRTUAL as the underlying asset was launched on a certain platform, supporting up to 2000 times leverage trading. On its first day, the contract's trading volume broke through 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 Theory - The Thrilling Leap from Issuance Platforms to AI Sovereign Society

In the future planning of Virtuals Protocol, each technological upgrade and mechanism innovation aims to make the outline of the "AI Sovereign Society" increasingly clear. In the initial stage, Virtuals was just an AI agent issuance platform, quickly gathering a group of enthusiastic developers and users through liquidity locking, buyback and burn, and other tokenomics mechanisms. With hundreds of AI agent projects being launched, the agents began to operate independently and autonomously monetize in scenarios like gaming, content creation, and market analysis. Users are no longer just spectators but have 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 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 commercial closed loop; community participation is obtained through staking veVIRTUAL for governance rights, and sharing transaction fees and repurchase dividends, merging the identities of "participants" and "owners" in the token economy. All of this is building a prototype of a digital nation operated by countless autonomous agents and co-governed humans.

So far, this ecosystem has demonstrated several milestone achievements: the security audit agent IRIS in the mainnet Genesis Launch was listed with a subscription rate of 1500%, with its market value soaring from $200,000 to $80 million; the virtual idol Luna achieved a monthly income of $1.2 million through fan donations, with its token market value surpassing $120 million; the hedge fund format VADER has been operating steadily in a cross-chain environment, with a market value exceeding $100 million... These data not only reflect the feasibility of the agent business model but also prove that the "AI agent economy" is moving 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 days to come, 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; instead, it is nurturing a new type of society from the ground up, where countless AIs and humans coexist and govern together — this is the true ecological evolution, and a thrilling leap towards an "AI Sovereign Society" has just begun.

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